Container Gardening Adds Beauty to Your Home

Container gardens can create a natural sanctuary on a balcony, rooftop or a busy city street.  You can easily accentuate the welcoming look of a deck or patio with colourful pots of annuals, or fill your window boxes with beautiful shrub roses or any number of small perennials. Whether you arrange your pots in a group for a massed effect or highlight a smaller space with a single specimen, you’ll be delighted with this simple way to create a garden.

Physical Attributes - Container gardening enables you to easily change your color scheme, and as each plant finishes flowering, it can be replaced with another one which is ready to bloom. Take in consideration the physical aspects of the plants you are considering.  Whether you choose to harmonize or contrast your colors, make sure there is variety in the height of each plant. Think shape and texture.  Tall strap-like leaves will give a good vertical background to low-growing, wide-leaved plants. Choose plants with a long flowering season, or have others of a different type ready to replace them as they finish blooming.

Creative Containers - Experiment with different containers. You might have an old porcelain bowl or copper urn you can use, or perhaps you’d rather make something really modern with timber or tiles.  If you decide to purchase your containers ready-made, terracotta pots look very nice, but they tend to absorb water. To prevent your plants from drying out, paint the interior of terracotta pots with a special sealer available from hardware stores.  Plastic pots can be painted on the outside with water-based paints for a more personalized, creative effect.  When purchasing pots, remember to buy matching saucers to catch the drips. This will prevent cement floors from staining, or timber floors from rotting.  Always use a good quality potting mix in your containers, esuring the best performance possible from your plants.

If you have steps leading up to your front door, an attractive potted plant on each step will welcome and delight your visitors.  Indoors, pots of plants or  flowers help to create a cozy welcoming atmosphere.

Placement - Decide ahead of time where you will place your pots, then purchase plants that will flourish well in that particular area.  There is no point in buying sun lovers for a shady area as they will not flourish there.  Keep in mind, some plants have really large roots and are best suited for the open garden.

Varience in size - Space permitting, consider placing a group of potted plants off to one side of your front door.  It will be more visually appealing than two similar plants placed one on each side.  Group the pots in odd numbers rather than even, and vary the height and type.  To tie the group together, add large rocks that are similar in apperance and just slightly different in size.  Three to five pots of the same type and color, in different sizes also create and attrative look.

With a little creativity and determination, you will soon have a container garden that will be the envy of both friends and strangers.