Specialty Gardening: 2006 Container, 1 by rcn48

rcn48 wrote:
This one is a little closer. My goal: hoping the Chameleon plant will trail over the edges by summer's end. With any luck, the Iron Cross Begonia will triple in size as our other Begonias did last summer. If the Blood Grass gets taller, I'll limb up the Japanese Maple. The Plectranthus has been trimmed and cuttings started to fill out the back of the container. The leaves on this one are huge with deep purple undersides and should spill over the sides as well. I realize now that I'm going to have to move a couple of the Houttuynias in the back to make more room for the Plectranthus cuttings.

I worked the soil in front of the planter yesterday to get it ready for planting a variety of plants to enhance the overall image of this area. Have plans to plant Sweet Potato Vine 'Blackie' and 'Marguerita' to swallow the floor of the gazebo and plant another vine - either Clematis 'My Angel' or a passion flower vine to climb up the left of the gazebo. The Clematis that is there now is suffering so something else needs to be added. To the right, I'll plant Euphorbia cotinifolia that has copper red foliage to pick up some of the reds in the container and incorporate Coleus 'The Line' with its bright yellow foliage and maybe Perilla 'Magilla'.

Last year's contest was Foliage plants only, no flowers and it seems I'm still hung up on foliage :)
I always figure if you can make an attractive container without depending on flowers, go for it!

A side note on the hypertufa container. We bought this 3 years ago and when it was delivered we had to use 2x4's as skids to get it off the back of the tractor trailer onto our truck! We had to do the same thing when we got it back home, and slid it off the back of the truck onto a table at the nursery where it sat for 3 years!!! I just had to find the right place for it in our gardens before moving it. My husband has severe back problems, so one day while he was busy elsewhere, I slid the darned thing off the table into the back of my van, drove as close as I could get to the gazebo - maybe 50', slid it off the back of the van onto a dolly with wheels and then used a rope to drag the thing onto the gazebo - Whew!, almost broke the rope! And they say hypertufa is lightweight? Not!!

Debbie

Debbie