Top Outdoor Potted Plants – How to Have Year Round Interest

Someone asked me recently ‘how can I have an interesting garden when I just have a small patio to work with?’ This got me thinking, if I only had room for say five outdoor potted plants which ones would I go for?

My Criteria for my Top Outdoor Potted Plants

If you are expecting me to suggest plants which flower all year round, you’ll be disappointed. Such plants are like ‘unicorns’ non-existent.

Also, I don’t know about you but I think containers with nothing but flowers are boring. I can honestly say that some of my loveliest outdoor potted plants have very non-descript flowers, if they have them at all. But they have wonderful foliage. So not all of my five are flowering.

Also I’m going to suggest plants say that I think are pretty low maintenance, provide a mix of heights and which look good together.

OK, so what are these top outdoor potted plants?

1. Clematis

A lot of people who visited my open garden in the summer commented that they hadn’t considered putting a clematis in a container. But for me a clematis growing up an interesting obelisk provides valuable height. That’s something which is all to often lacking in a display of patio containers.

Also, if you choose the right clematis – one from pruning group 3 – you get a really long display of flowers. My clematis Bernadine flowers from early to mid summer right through to mid autumn! That’s a lot of bloom for your buck! She’s still blooming her socks off now as I type! Bernadine is a lovely mauve. But if you want a different colour Acropolis is in the same pruning group, flowers from May to October and is a gorgeous hot reddy pink.

Despite what you may have heard about different pruning groups, it’s not difficult to prune clematis if you follow the rules. Bernadine is in pruning group 3 that means she flowers on new growth made that season. So this group in particular needs regular, firm pruning. If you allow the old growth to grow up and up, year after year, you end up with nothing at eye-level with a flower, and all the flowers happening on the new growth that’s well over your head!

So you must cut them back hard. Prune them in late Winter or early Spring typically February or March. Even if they’ve got lovely juicy looking growth at the top, you need to cut back to a good pair of viable healthy buds about 6 inches – 18 inches above soil level. But other than that, they’re easy peasy.

2. Tulips

I don’t think any Spring is complete without tulips. I also think they look superb in containers, be they metal buckets, clay pots or wicker baskets!

So I would definitely include tulips on my list of top outdoor potted plants. I know that the bulbs will only provide oomph for a couple of months, but oh what joy when they do arrive! Also the beauty with tulips in a pot is that you can treat yourself each year to different colours or forms depending on your mood or colour-scheme. So even with a small number of pots on a patio you could have a real play each and every year.

Here are some of my favourite tulips. But to be honest, with so many to choose from, I’d regularly ring in the changes.

However, if you’ve only got a limited number of containers on your patio, what do you do with the tulip container the rest of the year?

Well, you could use the tulips to underplant something else. But in my experience tulips don’t come back very strongly year after year. Even with masses of TLC they lose their mojo after a couple of years. And digging out the bulbs to replace them, from underneath a precious rose or clematis is tricky.

So instead, I’d use the container for another plant which is compatible with your tulips’ growing and planting season. For me that means a dahlia.

3. Dahlias

Dahlias and tulips are a brilliant ‘tag team’ in that they bloom at opposite ends of the gardening year and when one is ready to be lifted from a pot, the other needs planting! So that container doesn’t stay empty for long.

For instance, I have the smashing dahlia Mexican Star – a chocolatey red colour, flowering for all it’s worth at the moment. It’s not the showiest of dahlias but I think it’s the lovelier for not having blooms which look like ‘the mother of the bride’s hat’ if you know what I mean!

Mecican star grows about 1.2m, tall and has lovely dark stems and lightly bronzed, dark green foliage. On top of the stems you find a bushy mass of single flowers throughout summer and autumn. These have dark brownish-red petals with a vibrant yellow central disc. I love it. And the beauty of this or other dahlias is that when the risk of frosts approaches you lift the tubers and store them over winter. That means the container is free for you to plant up the tulips, which I do in November.

In March or April I start off the tubers indoors, in my sitting room (poor Mr F-W) in plastic pots – moving them out into the containers once the risk of frost has passed and the tulips have finished. Perfect timing!

If you want something showier than Mexican star or you have a different colour-scheme, as the gallery above shows, there’s really no shortage of dahlias to consider. Just bear in mind that for a pot you want a bushier variety rather than one which will produce just a few impressive blooms.

4. Roses

As with clematis, lots of people think they can’t have a rose in a container on a patio. But some of my loveliest pots involve a rose – perhaps underplanted with some erigeron, but often, just on their own.

We have the rose Golden Celebration underplanted in this way at the front of our cottage. But looking equally as lovely we have the rose Lady of Shalott all on her own in a pot at the back.

So, providing you have a chunky sized pot on your patio, I’d definitely go for a rose as one of your five plants. A rose will give you the year round structure of a shrub plus masses of scented blooms for a lot of the year (provided you do lots of dead heading regularly).

5. Grasses

I began this blog saying that my five top outdoor potted plants wouldn’t all be flowering. That’s because I think you need variety – otherwise your containers become samey. So if you can only have 5 containers on a patio, I would recommend putting something with interesting foliage in one of them. Indeed the pots next to my back door pretty well have nothing but grasses, acers or ferns in them!

Again I think you are absolutely spoilt for choice in terms of the plants you can go for. If you are after a grass, I think Japanese Blood Grass is lovely and you can grow it in a relatively small pot.

I also love Uncinia Rubra. It’s so self sufficent. I literally do nothing to this plant other than water it.

Indeed, I think there are so many lovely grasses, ferns, and large leafed plants out there that I’d be tempted to have foliage only plants in my top 5!

For instance, this shot of my patio below features a banana plant (Ensete), heuchera Fire Chief, Dahlia Mexican Star a grass and a fern. That’s five plants packing a very powerful punch!

I hope this provides a little inspiration for those with just a small patio. I honestly think if you go for a mix of heights and plant types, and don’t obsess solely with flowers, you can have an area packed with top outdoor potted plants, each one of which really earns its space on your patio and in your heart! Happy gardening – x