Contain Your Winter Color
November 23, 2015 | By webadmin
Keep your landscape looking fresh and vibrant even through the coldest parts of winter with custom mixed container gardens. Container gardens can be as grand or simple as you want. They can be created for a shaded porch or a sunny patio. Fill them with herbs, color, perennials, annuals and even spring bulbs to extend their seasonal beauty. The best part about container gardens? They are easy to maintain, especially if you have an automatic drip system hooked up to keep them watered.
Planting Tip: Thriller, Filler, Spiller
Keep these elements in mind when creating your own container garden.
- Thriller plants are taller plants that are set in the middle or back of a container to provide height and drama.
- Filler plants are shorter and wider than your thriller plants, and help flesh out the middle area of your container.
- Spillers are trailing plants that will spill over the edge of your containers to balance everything out.
Successful container designs come in all shapes, colors and sizes. Endless combinations can be created to compliment your home and garden decor.
Here are a few you can create yourself, or have a landscape service or local garden center design and plant one up for you.
Visit our Pinterest page for winter container inspiration.
Edible Color: Turn your mixed winter container into beauty you can harvest. Mix fragrant herbs and with vibrant seasonal color. Herbs that thrive through winter include cilantro, dill, parsley, rosemary and thyme. Pansy and viola blooms are excellent cool-season color options (plus the flowers are edible). Add height and foliage contrast with edible kale as a background for the blooms.
Elegant in Shade: There are some lovely cool-season color options for shady containers. Cyclamen offer dramatic blooms in shades of white, pink, red and lavender. In a hard freeze, cover with frost cloth so the blooms stay put. Mix blooms in white, purple, pale pink, red or magenta with ornamental cabbage or plant en masse on its own. Primrose are another good option for less sunny areas. Violas will tolerate a bit more shade than pansies.
Texture Galore: A uniquely shaped container filled with a variety of ornamental cabbage in shades of white, green and purple is a modern take on the winter garden. Add spiller plants such as English ivy or trailing thyme for added interest.
Traditional Holiday: Evergreen branches from the garden, berried branches of holly, pinecones, dogwood branches from a garden or craft store and pops of pansies offers a more traditional container garden; reminiscent of northern holiday style.
The ideas and options are endless! For more container garden inspiration visit our Pinterest and Houzz pages.
