Innholdsfortegnelse for Container Gardening 2024 i Southern Living

SMALLER IS BETTER Container gardening allows you to have living plants almost anywhere you want: lining steps, on a wall, hanging from a porch beam. You can also create groupings that aren’t possible in garden beds. Best of all, they aren’t expensive to maintain or time-consuming to keep looking fresh. THE PROS OF CONTAINER GARDENING Often the soil around your home isn’t ideal for long-term gardening success because it’s usually made up of a thin layer of topsoil spread over the compacted subsoil after construction. It’s enough for a lawn to grow in the short run, but it’s not ideal for the long haul. Plants won’t be able to thrive without loosening and enriching the soil, which can be expensive in terms of materials, as well as time-consuming. Gardening…

Caladium leaves can be shaped like hearts, arrows, or lances in color combinations of red, pink, rose, white, chartreuse, and green. The brilliant foliage is often translucent, which makes these plants light up your garden. They have brightened shady spots for generations, but now you have the option of newer selections that can take some direct sun. Nurseryman Stewart Myers of Myers Plants & Pottery in Pelham, Alabama, (myersplantsandpottery.com) has been planting thousands of caladium tubers every year for the last 30 years. His secret? Always plant after Mother’s Day, when the soil has warmed. “If you plant too early, when the soil is still cool, your bulbs will rot,” he says. Caladiums are ideal for new and experienced gardeners because they are so easy to grow. LOOK AT…

One look at coneflowers and you’ll be hooked on these Southern natives. They love heat and humidity and entice birds, bees, and butterflies. Coneflowers will bloom best in full sun but can handle a little afternoon shade. They are tolerant of just about any soil type as long as it is well drained. The beautiful blooms are happiest in fertile, slightly moist soil but hate wet feet. To improve drainage in clay soil, amend with organic matter such as peat or chopped leaves. Once established, coneflowers can become quite drought tolerant, but you should water new plants regularly the first season to help them settle in. Mulch them lightly to conserve moisture. Coneflowers work anywhere, but they’re ideal when paired with ornamental grasses, summer phlox, salvias, red-hot pokers, black-eyed…

As the former director of gardens at the Dallas Arboretum, Jimmy Turner tested thousands of selections of violas and pansies, but violas were his hands-down favorite. Why? Because violas are the best performers. “Violas bloom longer than pansies and are more prolific,” he says. “Newer selections are more tolerant of cold weather, and they are all resistant to bugs and mildew.” These easy-to-grow, colorful plants bloom in white, yellows, oranges, pinks, reds, purples—even black. “Gardeners often think viola flowers won’t show up from a distance because they’re so small, but one plant may have hundreds of flowers at a time, while larger-flowered pansies have only two or three blossoms,” Turner explains. “The total amount of color is what we were looking for. I actually used violas in the arboretum’s winter…

Ask Carol Guedalia, horticulturist with The Greenery on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, the easiest way to add long-lasting color to the fall garden, and her answer is simple: pansies. “They bloom prolifically and just ask for a few things,” says Carol. “They love sun—at least six hours a day—and fertile, well-drained soil. Also, it’s important to feed your flowers.” She prefers an organic fertilizer, such as blood meal, periodically supplemented with a liquid plant food. She mixes her petals with herbs such as parsley, lemon thyme, golden sage, and rosemary, as well as with veggies such as kales, chards, and mustards. Carol adds, “Pansies are always happy plants—ideal for both new and experienced gardeners.” Pansies LIGHT Full sun SOIL fertile, well-drained WATER Medium Catch the Cool Wave Be sure…

TRADITION WITH A TWIST THE DOOR: French doors with a fresh Chippendale spin complement this Colonial home’s English roots. Curved muntins on the doors and spherical finials on the parapet play off the rounded boxwoods lining the front of the home. THE STAIN: Jacobean (2750); minwax.com. THE CONTAINERS: Symmetry rules in this balanced arrangement that includes a pair of ‘Blue Point’ junipers tucked in with ‘Ogon Gold’ Acorus and creeping Jenny. Designer Charlie Thigpen of Charlie Thigpen’s Garden Gallery in Birmingham planted this foursome in concrete footed urns to retain the traditional feel of the home and complement the stone pavers on the porch. He added color in the smaller planters with yellow and crimson Liberty snapdragons, yellow marigolds, crimson dianthus, and more creeping Jenny. AMERICAN BEAUTY THE DOOR:…

You may think you know all about mums, but consider this: Old-fashioned heirloom mums have little in common with the assembly-line potted ones sold by big-box stores for de rigueur fall porch displays—only to be discarded a few weeks later. For one thing, heirlooms don’t look like sheared round boxwoods with flowers glued on. Most of them grow into loose, billowy fountains of stems 2 to 3 feet tall that sway in the breeze and combine much better with salvias, asters, grasses, and other stalwarts of fall borders and containers. For another, they’re longer lived and easier to grow than debt on a credit card. Old-fashioned mums form spreading clumps, making them simple to share. Just sink a shovel into the midst of the clump in either late fall or…

Looking for a bushy, fuss-free plant crowned with spires of yellow, red, blue, purple, or pink flowers that butterflies love? Try planting salvia, also known as sage, and you’ll know why. These plants are cousins of the culinary sage. However, except for pineapple sage, which has pineapple-scented leaves that are excellent for flavoring drinks, they are grown solely for show. Some of them start blooming in spring and continue through the fall. Others save their blooms for late summer and fall. No matter—they’re all beautiful and easy to grow. Sages need sun, well-drained soil, good air circulation, and room to grow. (Most get big.) Some of them are winter hardy throughout the South. Others, such as forsythia sage, will survive winter from the Lower South (USDA Zone 8) on down,…

editor’s tip Grow different types of basil in pots near your kitchen door. The classic herb of summer, basil brings fragrance, beauty, and flavor to any garden. Used fresh, it makes delicious pestos and is an ideal partner for homegrown tomatoes. Plus, it thrives in the South with little care, so it’s great for new gardeners. Cindy and George Martin, owners of The Tasteful Garden in Heflin, Alabama, are passionate about basil, a cornerstone of their mail-order business. Cindy has three favorite basils—‘Lime,’ ‘Mammoth,’ and ‘Purple Ruffles’—because they enhance the flavors of her best recipes. Growing this versatile herb is as much fun as cooking with it. You can buy plants from your local nursery or start your own from seed. Basil likes warm soil, but it needs a…

COLOR BURST This arrangement starts with the containers. Georgia designer Carmen Johnston selected these glazed blue pots because “they intensify just about any color you pair with them.” To get the scale right, choose three pots of varying sizes—small, medium, and large. Place in full sun, and water well. Deadhead spent flowers, and pinch back long stems to keep plants bushy. editor’s tip The plants in this LSU-themed container all thrive in part sun and moist potting mix. A WINNING COMBINATION Garden centers abound with flowers and foliage in a rainbow of options—from Tar Heel blue to Tennessee orange to Sooner red and every shade in between—allowing Southerners to express their team spirit in a fun, beautiful way. If your family boasts fans of different stripes, create multiple containers so…

Zinnias are the Anne Boleyns of the garden: They love to lose their heads. As long as you keep cutting stems for arrangements, they’ll keep blooming profusely in a rainbow of colors up until an autumn frost. They’re also the easiest annuals to start from seed. And you don’t need a seed-starting kit. Just find a bare patch of soil or container filled with potting soil in a sunny spot, tear open a seed packet, scatter these large seeds over the surface, rake the soil very lightly, and then water. The seeds will sprout within a week. When seedlings are a few inches tall, thin them to 10 inches apart so each plant has enough room. Crowded plants can mildew and develop leaf spots. MAKING THE RIGHT CUTS For…

Plant a few of the new sun coleus and the future’s so bright you’ve gotta wear shades. These goosed-up annuals blow away their shy, shade-loving predecessors in terms of pop and performance in the garden and containers. The leaves don’t fade or burn, even in hot summer sun. They bear few of the tall and ungainly flower spikes that detract from the dazzling leaves. And while some selections trail, most grow upright, dense, and bushy and seldom need pruning or pinching. Sun coleus also do well in light shade. You’ll find no shortage of ways to exhibit them, as they’re terrific in both borders and containers. Plant a solid sweep, or mix several different colors in a pot. When combining multicolored selections with other annuals or perennials, make sure…

Supertunias are colossal performers,” says award-winning garden expert P. Allen Smith. “They beat the odds, endure the elements, and even bury their dead.” This means you don’t have to remove spent flowers or suffer through sticky petunias after a rain. Just plant, water, feed, and prepare to get compliments. Here, Smith shares two design ideas showcasing the bold colors of petunias. CONTAINER #1: TRADITIONAL POT “Create unity by repeating plants and colors,” says Smith. In the photo at left, sunny ‘Supertunia Citrus’ petunia becomes the focal point of this unexpected color palette consisting of yellow, rust, purple, and a little red. Growing 10 inches tall and trailing 24 inches in length, ‘Supertunia Citrus’ allows room for other plants such as coleus, verbena, and calibrachoa in the container. But don’t stop…

Tougher than Clint Eastwood, lantana parties in heat, chortles at drought, and blooms in sunny colors from spring to fall. Plus, its nectar-laden flowers attract pretty butterflies like moths to a flame. Lantana can be an annual or a perennial, depending on the selection and where you live. In general, it’s winter hardy in the Lower, Coastal, and Tropical South (USDA Zones 8 through 10). Tough heirloom types like ‘Miss Huff’ (orange-and-pink flowers) can get big—up to 5 feet tall and twice as wide—but, frankly, that’s a lot larger than most people want. Fortunately, plant breeders have developed lower-growing, compact hybrids suitable for containers and small gardens. Plants in the Lucky series, for example, grow about 12 inches tall and 16 inches wide, while those in the Landmark series…