Design Basics

There are a few design principles to consider when planting container gardens. They concern dimension, shape, and color.

To avoid a flat look, add a spike, a tall plant, or a garden ornament for height and a trailing plant to drape down from the container. A grouping of different sized containers will also help achieve this goal. Chose plants that are in scale with the size of your container and planting backdrop. As a guideline, plants should be twice as tall as the visible part of the container. If planting one large plant such as an ornamental grass, select a larger container that will fulfill both plant growth and design needs. Large plants can overwhelm small situations and small plants make little impact in large spaces. Also consider whether the container will be viewed from one side or several angles and position plants accordingly.

Consider the texture or shapes of plant leaves and flowers. A variety of leaf shapes and sizes can be more appealing than uniform foliage. Combine round-shaped flowers with irregularly shaped ones.

Color Wheel

Also consider whether you want an area to stand out through the use of hot colors like orange and red, or recede through the use of cool colors like blue and violet. One-color compositions can be used but may look flat. Repeating a flower color among the different vertical plant layers will give a stronger and more unified appearance.

A grouping of containers devoted to different colors can help achieve the composition desired. Consider the color of plants within a container and the color among the group of containers. The colors of the containers themselves will contribute to the entire effect.

Take advantage of the variety of foliage colors. Foliage can be silver, gray, red, many shades of green, including yellow-green and blue-green, and the tawny beige found in winter dormant grasses. Variegated foliage can be the perfect complement to complete a colorful container.

Finally, use your imagination and find what pleases you. Remember that you can easily rearrange and replace plants within a container as well as rearrange which containers are grouped together.

Plant Possibilities

Choose plants based on light, moisture, color, height, shape, texture, desired theme, and more.

The group of plants most immediately thought of for container use may be annuals. In addition to new versions of old favorites, many new choices are available. Geraniums feature new zonal, ivy, and cascading types. New petunia colors are available as well as improved trailing types that require no pinching or pruning. There is also a mini-trailing petunia family species, Calibrachoa, with quarter sized blooms. Other improvements have been seen in Verbena, Salvia, Impatien, and Fuchsia. Among the relatively new annuals are Angelonia, Bacopa, Ipomea, Evolvulus, Bracteantha, Pentas, Scaevola, and Torenia.

Don’t overlook “indoor” or tropical foliage plants for shady areas. Consider Dracaena, Schefflera, Ficus, Aspidistra, and Fatshedera. Another group of sun-loving plants is cacti and succulents, but don’t combine them with plants that require more moisture.

Perennials can be combined with annuals to achieve design goals. And don’t over look Bulbs and bulb-like plants can also be grown in containers. Consider Asiatic and Oriental lilies, dwarf dahlias, gladiolus, montbretia (Crocosmia), Calla lilies, Anemones, tuberous begonias, and Siberian iris.

Ornamental grasses and grass-like plants grown in containers make bold statements. Pennisetum, Miscanthus, Calamogrostis, Deschampsia, Panicum, and for very large containers, Phyllostachys may be considered.

Vines on a trellis can also be used in container gardens. Consider morning glory, Nasturtium, scarlet runner bean, or canary creeper.

You can also add Herbs they add foliage texture and color, contribute fragrance to the landscape.