A Movable Garden

Experiment with garden design by planting in pots and moving them around

In late summers , the due north - facing terrace that wrap around the back of our older farmhouse has see like an in - ground garden . But the plant there are all in container . This movable , different - every - year garden gives me enormous pleasance for minimum labor . It is a blank space where I try risky color strategy and experiment with strange annuals and tender perennial . It is a place where I practice garden aim without have to hollow . In short , it ’s a place where I can have my patty and deplete it , too .

An ugly terrace becomes a potted garden

While I have always enjoy assembling plant combinations in containers , making the whole bench into a garden with structure and focal points is a relatively raw speculation . It all set about when we give up seek to make the 12 - understructure - all-encompassing , 33 - foot - farseeing slab of cement we inherited with the sign into an out-of-door life infinite .

geezerhood ago , we seek to relieve the ugliness of the cement by impart a small brick wall . While the soft , warm colouration of the old bricks took the curse off the cement , the stick in space was even less congenial . The terrace was just too narrow for a well-heeled group of garden piece of furniture . It was also too red-hot in the summer . From June to August , it bake in the sun for eight minute a 24-hour interval .

Ironically , everything that was incorrect from a human perspective proved right for potted plants . My geranium fuck the estrus and the sunlight . The cucumbers in container grew like weeds , their dog vines cascading down the sides of the one-half whisky barrels and mouse along the paved airfoil . shortly , the humiliated wall were given over to lot of rosemary , barrel of patio tomatoes , and windowpane box of petunias and nasturtiums .

finally , the plants gain . We give up attempt to ride on the terrace and fled to the friendly shade of an older apple tree . There , we could lunch in consolation and dress the garden furniture in companionable groupings .

Grouping pots gives shape to the space

From a practical standpoint , the patio serves as an entrance into the principal garden from the slue crank doors in the kitchen . Opposite the 6 - fundament - broad door , a comparable opening move in the low-pitched brick rampart pass onto the lawn , provide a view down the long bloc of the garden . An bloc is just an imaginary straight tune , a spikelet along which elements of a garden can be arranged . I see this concept in the big landscape , and find that an axial arrangement on the bench proved valuable , too .

To make the boxcar - mold terrace more interesting , it needed to be divided . It made sense to imagine a one-dimensional axis running from the entrance at the narrow death to the heart of the wall at the far last ( photograph , right ) . One year , I used an Australian rosemary ( Westringia fruticosa , also cognise asW. rosmariniformis ) standard place on the rampart for a focal point . The paries gave the potted plant added stature and grandness .

From the start , I had been putting pots of geranium ( Pelargoniumspp . ) on either side of the wide opening in the broken brick bulwark between the terrace and the garden . But I shortly realise that to go for their own with the view , the container themselves needed to be bigger . So I buy two skunk 20 inches high and 24 in across . At first , I cling to my early planting scheme of red geranium surrounding tall , spiky dracaenas ( Dracaena marginata ) , withVinca majordraped over the edges of the containers . Later , I made more adventurous choices , such as cannas ( Cannacvs . ) , coleus ( Solenostemon scutellarioidescvs . ) , and bronze finocchio ( Foeniculum vulgare‘Purpureum ’ ) .

There are two other openings in the perimeter of the brick rampart . One at the narrow ending tie the patio to the breezeway . This is the approach to the garden that visitors use . A second opening at the far closing of the bench provides accession to the dog run . Both entrances are vital . The first needed emphasis to announce its function and appear welcoming ; the second needed to be disguised .

Disguise an eyesore with a vine-laden arbor

emphasise the visitor ’s entrance with larger gage and groupings of small pots was comparatively wanton . The heel test , however , required a dissimilar proficiency . Instead of drawing attention to the initiative , I wanted to hide it . So I build an arbor out of maple saplings and grew annual vines on it . The logic gate to the run was still accessible through a swing curtain of tendrils , leaves , and flowers , but it did n’t push itself . To obscure an eyesore , vines have to be vigorous and leafy . My favorites for this purpose are scarlet moon-curser bean ( Phaseolus coccineus ) , moonflower vine ( Ipomoea alba ) , and ‘ Heavenly Blue ’ dawn glory ( Ipomoea tricolor‘Heavenly Blue ’ ) .

As more and more plants and plenty accumulated on the patio , I lead off mass them at the feet of the entrance plant and in groups on either side of the imaginary axis vertebra . By the end of the time of year , only a path from one death of the terrace to the other continue between sprawl nasturtium ( Tropaeolum majus ) and sweet potato vine ( Ipomoea batatas ) . What started out as a mixed aggregation of potted plants has evolved into a genuine garden .

Then I found a cedar arch that fit exactly into the narrow opening in the brick paries where visitors enter . Finally , the terrace garden was complete . It was awful what this simple social structure accomplished . Although the lattice side were light and capable , they hid part of the terrace so that visitor did n’t fuck quite what to expect . What had been an unwrap , unresolved space , now seemed a private , almost secret enclosure . Growing a dainty but lustful clematis ( Clematis tangutica ) in stool on either side of the arch leave the finishing touch .

Add focal points to strengthen the design

The archway also introduced a slimly conventional chemical element and seemed to call for a different discussion of the space it frame . I was reminded of a design principle I find out from my gardening friend Peter Wooster . He describes the proficiency as “ addressing the corners . ”

The rectilinear beds in Peter ’s garden explode with numberless textures , shapes , coloring material , height , and plant forms , but the excess is subtly curb . Each bottom is given structure by emphatic plants in the corners and middle . These forceful plants may be evergreen plant or deciduous shrub , and they serve as brackets , defining the corners and holding the gardens within their embracing .

To absorb care to the corners of the terrace , I needed something manmade to reenforce the sensation of formality and inclosure . A elegant 6 - understructure trellis made of twisted grapevine did the magic trick in one corner , while a fountain did the same in the other .

The fountain , my pride and joy , is the joint effort of our friend , Elizabeth McDonnell , a ceramic artist , and Trevor Youngberg , a thrower . A little jet of weewee shoot upwards from the beautiful ceramic testis Elizabeth made and subsides into Trevor ’s shallow pipe bowl , supported on a matching plinth ( photograph below left ) . The gamy - green glaze and the graceful relationship between the ball and the disc straightaway draw the heart as you enter the terrace garden , and the auditory sensation of the water is alluring .

The spring ’s location is just right , though it was much debated . I carried it tenderly from corner to tree trying it in unlike positions . I try out it in the middle of a longsighted stretch of rampart on one side of the main opening , but felt it was devastate there . The entrance corner won out . And that ’s just one reward of a terrace garden : morphological feature and focal point can be minor and portable , like the fount . They can be moved around until they are in the right berth .

At the far end of the patio , diametrical and centered on the archway , is a wroughtiron table . Secondhand and rather worse for wear , the board is still refined and help as a stand for my expert mint , another focal decimal point in the potted garden . This treasure is a drab ceramic bowl 9 inches inscrutable that rises from an 11 - in base and flares to 18 inch across . Last year , I planted it with reddened geranium , glowing spikes of salmonpink and olive - green New Zealand flax ( Phormium tenax ) , a peach - colour salvia ( Salvia splendens‘Carabiniere Orange ’ ) , and a wonderful coleus with pinkish patterns on the hot chocolate - brown leaves ( photo above right ) .

Maintaining a potted garden

While a potted garden is physically undemanding , it does require vigilance . Since the garden is small and the plants are view at penny-pinching range , grooming is critical . even remotion of dead flowers from annuals not only makes them bet just , it also keeps them inflorescence . Do n’t waver to cut back leafage plants whose branches get too long and ungainly . Take scissors or clippers and cut the stems back to a duad of leave .

Watering is the knavish chore because it is weather dependent . The hotter the temperature , the more often you have to water . The rate of vaporization also depends on the pot . A bountiful container retains wet longer than a small one . Also , plastic pots have wet longer than porous Lucius Clay and wooden containers .

I irrigate my smoke almost every twenty-four hour period from June to September . As the weather gets cooler and the nights shorter , I water less often . Always soak the soil soundly . H2O should run out of the drainage holes . Then , give up the plants to use up that water before you add more .

tearing and fertilizing can be done together . Every workweek or two during the height of the time of year , I dissolve a balanced fertilizer in the watering can and apply it to all the potted flora . I inseminate less often from September on .

As the gardening season winds down , I move some industrial plant indoors for the winter , like the Australian Rosmarinus officinalis , and I take cuttings of others like my beloved Brugmansia . Eventually , Jack Frost fix the rest . flora remain go to the compost pile and I use the spent soil to fulfill mess in the lawn . I store my stool in a shed for the winter , except for the gravid wood and plastic planters , which can bear the severity of the time of year . I take out half of the soil from these , and refill it in the spring .

Experiment with color, shape, and new plants

I love people of color . Until I had a garden , I had to make do with paints — water-color and oils — but nothing has given me as much joy as arrange and rearrange leaf and peak colors — colors the Winsor Newton Company never woolgather of . Putting together a cohesive , large - musical scale colour strategy in the garden requires meter and considerable horticultural expertness . But order colors together in container is easy .

you may give to try furious association , such as magenta petunias ( Petuniacvs . ) with Mexican flame vine ( Senecio confusus ) . In an in - reason border , the gratifying shock of orange and magenta might pall , but in a container , I incur it exciting . I love experimenting with jarring contrast on the one hand ( photo , at right ) and graduated color harmonies on the other . A successful combination in pots may give you ideas for your in - ground garden . An unsuccessful schema is easily remedied : move the pots or rip out the offending plant .

make up a garden on your bench can be a dress dry run for in - ground horticulture or an remnant in itself . For the past three summertime , I have operate on the garden - within - a - garden root : trying different color schemes and experimenting with Modern flora . What is fun is the flexibleness and exemption it give me .

Focal points can be small and portable in a terrace garden. This fountain was moved from spot to spot until a permanent home was found for the summer.

Every summer , layer of implant rise from the paving on my terrace garden . The get behind plants grow into each other and form ground covers , while the taller , bushy plant , like geranium , coleus , and New Guinea impatiens fill the mid - border positions . The cannas seem to reach as tall as the surge stands of Joe Pye weed ( genus Eupatorium fistulosum‘Gateway ’ ) in the repeated margin .

I even have Tree in the garden - withina- garden . The angels ’ trumpets ( Brugmansia‘Charles Grimaldi ’ ) , grown each yr from cuttings , shoot up to 6 foot during the season , and by August , they shade off the potted plants at their feet . The effect of the total garden surprises and delights me .

Imagine a garden where you’re able to separate the space in a unlike way every year . By arranging pots in groups , curve ball , or straight billet , you’re able to make hedge and lay out paths . you’re able to create peak bed by planting trailing plants as ground covers in the same toilet with tumid plants , and by stagger the sizes of your sight .

Think of your potted garden as if it were an in - ground boundary line . You want border plants and background plants ; you need different heights and size ; you want an interesting horizon with ups and downs ; and you want dividing line in bod of flowers and foliation . You can tinker with your potted edge all summer . If a plant gets too big for its allotted distance , move it . alternatively of a backbreaking hour , it will take you a couple of minutes .

Big pots have to remain in position once planted , but the smaller tummy can be shuffled around to your fondness ’s content . If you decide in the middle of the summer that you need something different , add or deduct a few container .

Single plants in kitty are a useful learning twist because they can be pop in and out of arrangement , and recombined in unlike ways . Large containers using several dissimilar kind of plant are more of a challenge , but that ’s part of the fun . As a rule , even a prominent container , such as a one-half whiskey barrel , reckon better when the variety of plants is confine to three or four kinds , plus a house trailer to drape over the boundary .

But rule are made to be broken . The real joyfulness of making a garden with pot plants is that you actually can have it all . you’re able to take risks and get away with it . you’re able to go overboard without going bankrupt . you’re able to have a beautiful garden without vote down yourself with workplace . It ’s a win - win situation .

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Focal points can be small and portable in a terrace garden. This fountain was moved from spot to spot until a permanent home was found for the summer.

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