Thursday was the opening Clarence Shepard Day Jr. of the St. Paul Home and Patio Show so I shake off by to take hold of a talk byNorthern Gardenercolumnist Don Engebretson , a.k.a , theRenegade Gardener . Don was a pioneer in putting garden knowledge on the Internet and speaks at a variety of home base and garden shows each winter . ( He ’s also a landscaper and writer . )
This class , his issue is coolheaded and Creative Containers . I ’m not going to go through everything he said because he ’ll be speaking again every day of the show , along with all these othergreat speaker , but there were a couple of points worth note . I love that container design has a wad of its root in geometry . So , even if you are not super ocular or esthetic , you could create a stunning container design by be some numbers - ground rule . Here are a mates of “ container recipe ” deserving remembering .
Before 7 , Go Odd
This container stand alone, looking regal.
One container alone face good . A single , dramatic potentiometer with one kind of works is especially stunning . Three spate together also look good . Two and four — not so much . Don recommends using odd Book of Numbers of container in grouping up to seven flock . After that , your eye ca n’t tell what ’s going on , so you could use eight pots in a very formal looking design and it would be soothing to the eye .
2 Flowers + 1 leafage = reasonably
Don has been a long - meter proponent of using foliage plants for grain , people of colour and interest in garden . Because many bloom plants — especially annual — run to have dull , green foliage , it ’s a practiced idea to add one foliage industrial plant for every two bloomers . A coleus , a succulent , a dope , even a perennial with unusual foliage , such as a genus Heuchera will take your container from bland to beautiful in seconds . A pigeonholing of containers with only foliage plants is also gorgeous and looks good all season . ( See the photo below . )
Two foliage plants (the grass and heuchera) combine well with one flowering plant (calibrachoa).
plant Should be Twice as magniloquent as the Container — at least
If you purchase a beautiful , tall pot , you need beautiful tall works in it . Generally , container appear best if the plants are at least double as marvelous as the smoke itself . So , if you have a large pot , consider adding a tall pasturage or even a minuscule tree to it . container that are wider than they are tall can handle much more than twice their tallness in plants and still look good .
For even more information on container gardening , plus other topics , be sure to stop by the MSHS stall at the St. Paul Home and Patio Show .
A grouping of all foliage containers adds interest all season long.
