Container gardens are good not only for saving space and limiting lawn impact. They’re also great for trying unique plants that require special soils and preventing invasive varieties from running amok. Plus, you can move the containers if you find that your plants are getting too much or too little sun.
Container gardens are ideal for both beginner gardeners and experienced landscapers looking to introduce more variety. They’re perfect for urban dwellers with little access to green space or renters with no authority over their yards. They are, in fact, for everyone.
Here are six design tips to get you started.
Add Dimension With Shelves and Stands
How does a container garden help conserve space, you ask? When working with containers, you can eschew the vertical layout of the traditional garden for a stacked arrangement. You can grow upwards, not just outwards. Many use this technique for privacy—the plants can act as a barrier between you and a close neighbor.
Create height by employing plant stands or installing a shelving unit. Another trick: Use tall and/or pedestalled planters. Avoid wasting soil by placing a plastic pot (or several) upside down inside the large planter first, then fill it the rest of the way with soil.
Get Creative With Your Containers
Here’s where you get to tailor the broad idea of a container garden to your own personal style. Just about anything can be a garden container. An old colander, a retired rainboot, zhuzhed-up paint cans, coffee tins, empty coconut shells—think outside the box. Just make sure you drill holes in the bottom to allow for proper drainage.
Plan out what you’ll be planting and, if your aim is ornamental, color-coordinate flowers with pots. Use varying shapes and sizes for “visual weight.” This has the same aesthetic benefit as texture and color diversity in an indoor space.
Don’t Use the Same Soil for Everything
Even if you do have decent soil beneath your lawn, it’s best not to use it for your container garden. Potted plants—especially edible plants—need lots of nutrition, aeration, drainage, and moisture retention, and you’ll get all these qualities with potting mix. Potting mix is soilless and therefore sterile, free of fungus and diseases.
The all-purpose kind is fine for most plants, but do your research. Some require more drainage than a standard potting mix can provide or an especially high or low pH. Succulents, for example, need a special cactus mix whereas ferns benefit from the high drainage provided by tropical potting mix.
Follow the Thriller, Filler, Spiller Method
Some people really have container gardening down to a science. The formula? Thriller plus filler plus spiller.
The “thriller” in this popular method is the showstopper—the big, bold focal point of the pot. For an ornamental container garden, this means spiky bloomers like asters, cosmos, and dahlias, or ornamental grass. For a container vegetable garden, anything that grows vertical—tomatoes, snap peas, pole beans, borage, or dill—could work.
The thriller should be tall and planted at the back of the pot. It’s planted alongside a filler, which is medium-sized and mounded or rounded like geraniums, petunias, carrots, parsley, or cilantro. Finally, the third part of the equation is the spiller. Ivies, cucumbers, squashes, and nasturtiums are great for cascading over the sides of planters.
The thriller, filler, spiller method helps container planters squeeze more into their pots. But remember: The species you plant together should prefer the same soil and light conditions.
Aim for Year-Round Action
Just like a traditional garden, you can keep a container garden blooming and beautiful year-round. Plant bulbs in pots during the fall for spring color. Fill your containers with cosmos, coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, and other summer bloomers throughout the hottest months. Then, continue harvesting your leaf lettuce through the fall.
The beauty of planting in containers is that you can better control their conditions and prevent invasive species from taking over. Better yet, fill your container garden with different varieties of native flora that take turns blooming. Your resident pollinators will thank you.
Keep It Low-Maintenance With Perennials
Starting a container garden is a lot of work, and many people aren’t keen to plant the gamut year after year. This way of gardening is already high maintenance with frequent watering (potted plants dry out quicker than in-ground plants) and trimming. Make it easier on yourself by planting perennials.
Perennials, contrary to annuals, come back every year. They’re a little tricky to grow in pots because their root systems are generally larger than annuals’, but rest assured the payoff of not having to replant everything come spring is well worth it. In addition to ornamentals, herbs are great for this.