Container recipes using hot new annuals, succulents, and veggies in unexpected combos plus garden and patio design ideas using container plantings.
When Proven Winners sent me some Superbells® Holy Moly!™ Calibrachoa hybrids to trial last spring (2015), my first thought upon opening the crate filled with potted plants was “Wow! These are well named.” With bright yellow petals covered in splashes of neon pink, the flowers practically glowed. In a container planting, these plants need to…
Who’s heart doesn’t do a little flip at the thought of moonlight and marshmallows? I know. The possibilities seem wondrous. But can you take such a potent commingling and apply it to that ho-hum shady spot in your garden? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, this romantic container recipe starts with a…
If the saying is true that you eat with your eyes, then vegetable gardening is a foodie’s dream come true. You can walk out your door and a minute later pull up beets with eye-popping white and purple bull’s eye insides and radishes as black as night. But what I also find immensely satisfying about…
Sometimes an eyeball-searing circus of a container planting, including super bright flowers that appear to be swinging through the air on upside down trapezes, is exactly what’s needed. Maybe you just want to give your front walkway a jolt of vibrant colour. Or maybe you’re not getting the whole chic-one-colour-planting trend (like the purple container recipe…
In my continuing quest to create container plantings with maximum flower power for minimum effort, I was really pleased with this vibrant purple and green combo I put together last summer. I’m a sucker for the ombré petals and steely centres of African daisies and, with their leaves adding lots of lush green texture, they…
Containers full of plants can do wonders for adding colour to a garden patio but they can do so much more. They can direct traffic, help wildlife, lend some privacy and give you the feeling that your space is much bigger than it really is. And you don’t need much space to begin with, either.…
I’m feeling the need to get creative with some fresh container planting ideas. This may have something to do with the fact that the weather right now is…(fill in your choice of expletive here). We’re already well into April but winter is continuing to be annoying, flinging snow, rain and hail all over southwestern Ontario.…
When spring seems to be taking forever to arrive, I take matters into my own hands and add a few pots of flowering spring bulbs to the kitchen windowsill. But I’ve never been keen on those sad plastic pots filled with sodden potting soil. Here’s an easy trick for making spring bulbs light up with…
What do 2,200 varieties of plants, all in containers exposed to a merciless Southern Ontario summer, look like? Awesome. The Sawaya Container Trials, one of North America’s largest, threw open their doors (so to speak) in late July for growers, retailers and members of the Garden Writers Association to check out what’s doing best, what…
Succulents–those chubby, rubbery plants originally hailing from arid climes–are my go-to plants when I want to fill a space with texture, not have to worry about their maintenance and, I’ll admit it, add a bit of humour. Maybe it’s their otherworldly shapes and colours. When succulents are planted in unlikely places, their oddness stands out…
The Clash is making a super-hot fashion statement for Spring 2015–no surprise given the tidal wave of throwback-to-the-Seventies looks. But will jarring colours work in the garden, too. Oh, yeah. Two of the plants I trialled on behalf of Proven Winners last year were Supertunia® Black Cherry Petunia hybrid and Vermillionaire™ Cuphea. The petunias had decadent,…
Are we there yet? Has spring arrived? Jaded gardeners in Southern Ontario know full well that, even though it’s April, we haven’t seen the last of snow, hail, ice, slush or general smeg. Resisting the urge to plant some kind of posey is hard. But we don’t have to. There are pansies. The reasons why pansies…
Commitment-phobic? Then gardening might be the ultimate turn-off. After all, growing plants entails sticking around in the same place to water, feed, prune and, yes, enjoy their beauty, year after year, doesn’t it? Not necessarily. Here are 5 ideas to have green and growing things with you wherever you roam. Click on any photo to read…
Each time I’ve visited deserts in New Mexico and Arizona, I got the eerie sense that I was walking along the sea floor. Desert plants, and succulents in particular, can bring an otherworldly aspect to a garden. So I was happy to find “How to create a sea-creature succulent garden”, an online article on the…
I didn’t think of marigolds as a salad ingredient until I visited the vegetable and herb garden at Les Jardin de Metis, also known as Reford Gardens. The ‘potager‘ as it’s called there (hey, it is in Quebec) is a screaming example of how things you can eat can also make the most incredibly beautiful garden. The…
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There's always room for one more plant.
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