one pot, one year – lots of colour
When it comes to low maintenance container gardening, there are two key times of the year to focus on.
1. May planting for your summer/autumn display
2. November planting for your winter/spring display
If you have a good, successional, long-flowering plan for both of these displays you’ll only need to make two seasonal switches in the year
choosing a container
Using one of our Large Ribbed Planters as an example, we’ll walk you through the year, giving our top tips for ultimate container gardening success and a reliably floriferous display.
At Perch Hill, the team often use the successional planting pots that
slot perfectly into our Large Ribbed Planters. This means less
compost is required and you can easily do a quick mid-season switch of your planting.
choosing a container
Using one of our Large Ribbed Planters as an example, we’ll walk you through the year, giving our top tips for ultimate container gardening success and a reliably floriferous display.
At Perch Hill, the team often use the successional planting pots that slot perfectly into our Large Ribbed Planters. This means less compost is required and you can easily do a quick mid-season switch of your planting.
planning and planting your summer and autumn displays
Once the last of your spring tulips are over, it’s time to start thinking about planting out your summer display. Typically, this is a good job for May when it’s late enough for anything tender to be planted out, and hopefully well beyond the last frost of the spring.
Key things to think about:
— Choosing plants with a long flowering time from June-October
— Deciding on your colour palette
— Working out the number of plants for the size of your pot
Example – Butterly Pink Pot Collection
flowering time
When it comes to planning collections, flowering time is one of the most important factors we take into consideration. Here we’re using the example of our Butterly Pink Pot Collection which includes scabious, verbena and dahlias. With this collection the scabious will come into flower first, followed shortly by the verbena and then by July, all three will be in flower and with the right care and diligent deadheading, will keep flowering until the first frosts. It’s good to choose varieties with a similar flowering window when it comes to your summer containers so they all look brilliant together for as long as possible.
colour
In terms of colour palette, this collection sits in the soft and cool palette. Sarah’s wedding analogy – bride, bridesmaid and gatecrasher – is helpful when it comes to choosing your own combinations. It’s a failsafe way of creating a harmonious combination of plants which work together and complement each other. It also provides the essential element of contrast required to give the biggest and most show stopping impact.
See our example here:
Bride: Dahlia ‘Mystic Dreamer’ – the star of the show, fabulous in all her glory.
Bridesmaid: Scabiosa incisa ‘Kudo Pink’ – a similar colour to the bride, but a little less showy. There to back her up, like all good bridesmaids.
Gatecrasher: Verbena peruviana ‘Endurascape White’ – every good party needs a gatecrasher and the white here from the verbena adds a bit of calm to stop the whole collection being overly sweet and pink.
planting
For the successional inner pot (diameter 34cm) the set of 6 x 9cm pots would fit perfectly here. Plant into multi-purpose, peat free compost and water well.
summer care
Make sure the pot is in a sunny spot. Keep well-watered until established and apply a liquid feed Seaweed Extract fortnightly through the summer. The feed in the compost will provide enough nutrients for the first 5-6 weeks so start with the liquid feed about 6 weeks after planting. Deadhead flowers, snipping off fading flowers down to the next set of leaves. This helps promote the formation of axillary buds, encouraging repeat flowering all summer long. Containers need to be watered more regularly than borders to avoid them drying out. It’s also a good idea to raise them up on pot feet to help with drainage.
At the end of the growing season, in November, around the time of the first proper frost, you’ll need to lift and store your dahlia tubers. You can find more information in our complete Dahlia growing guide. The scabious are hardy and will overwinter happily in the pot (if using successional pots), or can also be lifted out and stored in a crate with some compost over winter before replanting in Spring (don’t forget to label). The verbena is grown as an annual so these can be lifted out and put on the compost heap, or into your garden waste bin.
planning and planting your winter and spring display
Depending on the weather, by late October or early November your summer planting will be nearing its end and it’s time to think about bulb planting.
Key things to think about:
Planning for a long period of flowering between planting and April/May
Deciding on your colour palette
Working out the number of bulbs for the size of your pot
The beauty of bulbs is there are so many to choose from and they come in such a joyous array of different colours, shapes and sizes. Think about where the pot will sit in the garden and what it will be planted alongside before you decide which colour palette you want to use.
planting
When planting bulbs this is a really helpful rule of thumb for quantities:
30cm x 30cm pot = 30 bulbs
40cm x 40cm pot = 40 bulbs
50cm x 50xm pot = 50 bulbs
If planting iris as a top layer you might want to up the quantity slightly – the bulbs are tiny – so you still have good coverage. The pots we use at Perch Hill that slot into the ribbed planters are 34cm in diameter, so you could aim for somewhere between 30 and 40 bulbs for a spectacular display. Even if only planting tulips, it’s still worth planting in two separate layers to give the bulbs more space so they aren’t crammed in next to each other.
Plant into multi-purpose peat free compost, with the bulbs pointy end up. As a basic rule of thumb, plant bulbs at a depth of at least three times their height and don’t worry about them being directly on top of one another in layers – bulbs have an uncanny ability to move and get into the optimum position for flowering. If planting a bulb lasagne, you can find more information on bulb planting depths and so on, here.
If you’re worried about squirrels digging up your bulbs over winter, try covering your pots with rose prunings or sprigs of holly to deter them. You don’t need to do a huge amount to your pots over winter as there will no doubt be plenty of rain. As long as they have good drainage and pots aren’t sitting directly on the ground you don’t need to worry about bulbs rotting in the damp.
aftercare
At Perch Hill fresh new bulbs are used every year for our container displays – but the spent bulbs that have already flowered in the previous year are not discarded, instead they usually get planted out into beds or borders for their second wind.
Once your spring bulbs have finished flowering, pull them out and let them dry off somewhere cool – then store away somewhere cool and dark until planting time next Autumn.
By late April it’s time to go and find those overwintering scabious and dahlias, or plan something fresh and new from our Spring Collection to create your new season display.