It’s at this time of year that I review my year in the garden. My gardening hits and misses. The things that worked, the things that didn’t and the lessons I’ve learned as a result. I’m going to devote two blogs to this as there’s just so much to cover. Sadly not all of it is successful!
This week I’m focusing on my containers.
Gardening Hits With Containers
Containers are not surprisingly the place where I can experiment the most. This isn’t always a matter of buying expensive new plants and pots. Often I’ll combine things I’ve grown as cuttings, stuffing them into an old bucket or basket, to see how they look. Or I’ll divide a perennial in the garden and pop one of the divisions in a container with something else. The results can be dazzling – or disastrous! But either way, gardening is never dull!
WelI in 2022 I’ve had some really encouraging successes.
Cuttings in Containers
My salvia cuttings of the red variety called Royal Bumble all took. So much so that I had too many of them. Now that’s what I call a ‘quality problem!’ So rather than have oodles of vivid red flowers in pots all over the place I grouped the cuttings together in my big old wicker basket on my patio. And the gorgeous salvia has rocked its socks off ever since – indeed it’s still in bloom as I type! (The photo above I literally took 5 minutes ago)
Lesson #1 – So my lesson from this is to always try to take salvia cuttings. They invariably take, and given that salvias can suddenly die on you, it’s a great insurance policy to take plenty of cuttings of your favourite.
Bulb Experimentation
This year I tested out all-white spring containers for the front of the house.
Actually, I’d packed metal pots full of different white flowering bulbs the previous October. These were all bought from Farmer Gracy. I really used lots of bulbs! Obviously when planting I had no idea whether or not they combination would work. Well it did. They were a huge gardening hit in 2022!
I planted the containers up with the six beauties below plus the stout Hyacinth Carnegie above. I really like this hyacinth as it has a sturdy stem, so it doesn’t flop over too much once its huge flowerhead is fully grown.
They looked really superb together. The mix of flower shapes and heights all worked well, and going all out for a colour theme stopped the display looking bitty.
Having said all that, there was one detractor. My colour theme was all white but with a hint of blue from the Puschkinia Libanotica to add a bit of ‘blue whiteness’ like the old toothpaste ads. But in reality that element didn’t really deliver.
So Lesson #2 I wouldn’t bother with the Puschkinia next time around.
Not wanting to waste them, but equally wanting to free up my containers, after they’d finished doing their stuff, I planted all of the white bulbs out in my sunny border. I won’t know until next spring whether that has worked or what they look like in a border, so I’ll report back then. Watch this space!
Gardening Hits with Hypertufa!
This year I also had my first go at creating a hypertufa planter. I had an old, chipped Belfast sink. No matter what I put in it always looked awful. Happily my arty-crafty friend Kay, who’s an absolute whizz at all things creative, said she was going to turn a similar sink into a stone type trough by using hypertufa. I’d never heard of the stuff so one sunny afternoon this summer I headed to Kay’s garden, with my sink, and learned all about it.
I discovered that hypertufa looks like concrete but is much lighter. That’s because when making up the concrete you don’t add the usual gravel to the sharp sand and cement but instead just add compost. You carefully layer this mixture onto your sink – having prepped it first by cleaning and drying it then coating it in PVA glue. I won’t go into all the detail here as I’ve a whole blog on my experience creating a hypertufa planter. Suffice to say that planted up it looked like an expensive stone trough, not a cheap nasty old sink! It’s definitely one of my gardening hits of 2022.
So my Lesson #3 give hypertufa a go. I’m going to try to create a round ‘stone’ bowl in 2023, by putting hypertufa around an old space hopper!
The only negative from the whole experience was in my planting. I planted the container with Heuchera Silver Scrolls and Geranium macrorrhizum White-Ness cuttings. The colour combination of the heuchera leaves with the geranium’s flowers really worked well. However, the geranium is so fast growing that it quickly began to dominate and swamp the heucheras.
Lesson#4 don’t put geraniums in a container with other plants, unless you’re prepared to ruthlessly cull them regularly!
Summer Planter
This year another of my gardening hits was a hot coloured summer planter. That said it was also a bit of a miss.
As a centrepiece for the container I used the shrub Physocarpus Lady in Red. I think this is a huge hit. It’s a real beauty. I planted this alongside a lovely Geum Nonna, the Heuchera Ginger Ale and Erysimum Golden Jubilee. The combination was lovely. However, only time will tell whether the container works for a second year. That will be a true test of it. But the early signs are that it may not.
Towards the end of the summer the heuchera started looking a bit ropey. I wonder if it was all too crowded. As an insurance policy, I lifted the heuchera from the container for now, divided it up and put the cuttings into pots on their own. If these thrive I may pop a couple back in the container in the spring.
So lesson #5 is be prepared to rejig your container plants and take cuttings if they start looking unhappy.
Ensete
Another of my big gardening hits of 2022 has to be over-wintering and bringing back to life my ensete.
I bought my first banana plant (Ensete Maurelii) last year. He’s an absolute beauty and I thought he would look wonderful in the jungly red corner of my patio. He surely did, in amongst the red Heuchera Root Beer, ferns and Dahlia Mexican Star. However, as the winter of 2021 neared I had to over-winter him. This involved cutting him back before the first frosts struck.
It took real courage as essentially you are hacking this beauty right back while he’s still looking perfectly healthy and stunning. You then store the ensete in a dry, frost free place, not really watering it at all.
I did all this, putting the poor hacked ensete, still in his pot and for extra frost protection wrapped in a mothy old blanket, in my potting shed. He looked dreadful and if I’m honest I thought I’d killed him. He smelled pretty awful too. But that could have been the mice which appeared to be partying over night on the horrid blanket he was wrapped in.
Bringing him back to life was nerve-wracking. I was impatient to kick start the process, especially as the smelly old chap was cluttering up my small potting shed. But I resisted doing anything too soon. I looked at endless youtube videos on what to do and got thoroughly confused.
In the end I decided to do the following. Once we got to May I repotted him in new compost, with plenty of perlite for drainage, and brought him back to life by putting the pot in my sitting room to start with. I watered it a bit but not too much. Miraculously a juicy new leaf unfurled from the wrotten looking stump. It was extraordinary.
After a few weeks I then put him back in his clay pot and put the pot outside and he thrived. Like Lazarus my ensete was back from the dead. I was so pleased with myself and with him.
So lesson #6 is to be brave, try something new – but be patient too!
Gardening Hits – Blue Pots
The final one of my gardneing hits with planters was the use of blue pots.
In 2022 I noticed how brilliant an old fern which I’d put in a blue pot looked. The lush green and the brilliant blue is a stellar colour combination.
This gave me the germ of the idea to create a shady walk way of blue pots combined with plants with interesting leaves – ferns, hostas, acers, spotty dotty (a hybrid podophyllum) etc. It’s still a work in progress, but I think it’s already transformed the area. If you want more advice on how to use colour in the garden you might find this blog on colour combinations helpful.
Lesson #7 here I think is to go wholeheartedly after a concept. If you have an idea, commit to it. This ensures your garden has cohesion and your end garden design looks less bitty and more purposeful.
So, that’s it – some container gardening hits (and a few misses) from 2022. Next week I’ll talk about what has and hasn’t worked away from the patio.
In the meantime, happy gardening – x