Follow Lucy Bellamy’s guide as she shows how to create a colourful garden for late winter and spring
PHOTOS JASON INGRAM
Close your eyes and picture a colourful garden in pots – one in which there’s always something to catch the eye, where the fresh brights of spring give way to summer’s rich, jewel-like colours and autumn’s rusty tones give way to winter’s small, vibrant flowers.
A garden in pots works well where space is limited and, by choosing trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals and bulbs that straddle the seasons or come back each year, you can cut your carbon footprint to grow greener, too.
Key jobs to get started with now
If you started your garden in pots earlier in the series, you’ll have the amelanchier tree that will blossom in spring ready to go. If not, plant it now using a large pot filled with peat-free soil-based compost.
■ Plant the hellebore, choosing a pot that is slightly bigger than the rootball and using a free-draining compost mix that’s two parts peat-free compost to one-part horticultural grit. Use your fingers to tease out a few of the roots and plant the hellebore the same depth as it was in its original pot.
■ Fill two 25cm pots two-thirds full with gritty compost and lay the tulip bulbs on top, with their pointy ends upwards. Keep to one flower colour per pot and space the bulbs 5cm apart to avoid overcrowding. Cover the bulbs with more compost, leaving a few centimetres between the top of the compost and the rim of the pot to make watering easier. Add a top layer of horticultural grit.
■ Plant the narcissus bulbs in the same way but spacing them more closely, with only a finger’s width between bulbs.
■ Water your pots once to settle the compost. Start watering regularly in spring, increasing frequency as it becomes warmer.
■ Leave the fading foliage on the narcissus and tulip bulbs for a minimum of six weeks after flowers are finished. Also pinch off fading flowers to encourage the plant to divert energy back into the bulbs, rather than into seeds. This helps the bulbs to build up their strength and flower again next year.
■ Replace the amelanchier pot’s top 5cm of compost in the spring, replenishing the plant’s nutrients for the year ahead.
Which plants to choose
