Low maintenance gardens should be filled with flower pots, planters and plant pots as these can offer an abundance of colour and interest all year round with the smallest amount of maintenance.
The one word that you may be screaming at your computer right now is ‘Watering’!! yes, watering is essential and must be done regularly for garden planters and flower pots but nowadays there is a range of simple irrigation systems that you can hook up to do all your watering for you. So at last the lazy gardener can literally sit back and watch the garden grow, or smell the roses – which ever they prefer!
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- Modern Planters
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- Garden planter Ideas
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- Flower Pots
Garden planter and container gardening offer a huge array of design and planting options. Because there is a planter in every shape and size you can tailor your container garden to suit the plants you like and the size of your garden.
A few tips when starting a container garden:
Drainage – the first error to avoid is lack of drainage. There is nothing worse than the sight of a garden planter filled with water and a sad plant float on top. Drainage means having drainage holes in the base and filling the inside of each pot to about 1/6 with broken pot fragments and stones
Soil – the right soil will determine the quality of your plants. You need to use a high energy compost. John Innes No 2 combines the best of soil with nutrients and would be suitable for container growing. Feeding your plants with a liquid fertilizer during the growing season will give an added boost and make your plants much lusher and flower better. Note: the nutrients found in potting composts is generally only enough for about 6 to 8 weeks, after that you need to add more.
Light – Know your garden and where the sun shines the most. The wonderful thing is; there is a part for every part of the garden and if your garden planter is positioned in the shade then you can plant it up with ferns, hostas, epimedium and dwarf ivies
Water – has mentioned above watering is the only real maintenance required with planters. But this needs to be done regularly and depending on the temperature and position of your planter you may need to water up to 3 times per week in the summer (in Ireland)
Large pot – large plant / small pot – small plant. It is important to buy and use generous sized pots and planters. Large plants require large space to grow. You can’t confine a large grow tree or shrub to a small pot and assume that it will sit they happily. Plants like Acers, Hydrangeas, Fatsia and cherry blossoms all need very large planter to thrive otherwise they will experience stem die back and become sparse and unhealthy.