Container Gardening

Containers can bring native plants into areas the garden can’t reach such as balconies, porches, and driveways. Containers also look great in the garden where they add an architectural element and can highlight a plant. Containers are also useful in providing specialize soil for plants that require unique conditions, I’m thinking glade plants or pond edge. A container can even be a mini pond or water feature.

Bigger is always better when it comes to containers as long as you can manage getting them into place. A container can be an investment so be sure to find out if it is safe to leave it out over winter or not. Our winter temps sometimes bust the bottoms out of my ceramic pots. Be sure to check your pot for a hole at the bottom. A hole can let out water for drainage. A pot that is meant to hold water should not have a hole.

Also, as I learned the hard way, plant roots can escape through a hole and an aggressive plant that you think is contained in a container will escape into the surrounding yard. Containers seem like an ideal way to contain plants that travel aggressively underground from invading large areas. However, I have tried to contain lizards’ tail, trumpet creeper, and blackberry in pots and they have all managed to escape over the top edge of the pot. So please use my experience as a cautionary tale.

To make a habitat for glade loving plants try filling the pot with sand and gravel and add a few decorative rocks to the top. For pond edge plants, line the bottom of the pot with clay and then add rich organic soil leaving a good gap below the rim for water to puddle. Most plants prefer regular potting mix, mixed with some garden soil, compost, and topped with leaf mulch. For a lower maintenance pot try rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium), nodding onion (Allium cernuum), fameflower (Phemeranthus calycinus), alum root (Heuchera richardsonii), sand phlox (Phlox bifida), and purple poppy mallow (Callirhoe involucrate). These plants all prefer average to dry, well drained soil so container living will naturally fit their needs.