The inspirational GARDENER
With some thought you can create a stunning display that lasts for months
Award-winning designer, TV broadcaster and best selling author who makes the ordinary extraordinary
Ccontainer-grown plantings can provide the backbone to gardens all summer. They’re colour-rich, verdant, long flowering and potentially dramatic in all the right ways. Annual bedding plants are often the core of these displays but there’s no reason not to combine longflowering perennials, tender perennials, shrubs and grasses with them, too. But to make the most of these colourful pots, it’s really worth considering how you place and show them off.
Clusters
Grouping together pots of different sizes on a patio or either side of a door creates a dramatic display. It generally works best to use the largest pots at the back, then tier down to small ones at the front. It’s essentially like creating a theatre stage set. You could have a star pot in the centre surrounded by smaller ones or stepped layers of ever-increasing sizes of pot. Grouping together pots of different sizes on a patio or either side of a door creates a dramatic display. It generally works best to use the largest pots at the back, then tier down to small ones at the front. It’s essentially like creating a theatre stage set. You could have a star pot in the centre surrounded by smaller ones or stepped layers of ever-increasing sizes of pot.
However you compose the cluster, it’s worth repeating certain plants through the display to hold it all together. This could be a trailing plant such as bacopa, which could pour out of multiple pots, or a showier fuchsia which repeats several times. Alternatively, consider a key colour in either foliage or flowers which repeats across the display. The Danish gardener Claus Dalby has some inspiring ideas on this front and is well worth an internet search.
Perfect pairs
A matching pair of pots, planted with the same species either side of a door, arch or entrance has a timeless beauty to it. Get a strong architectural look by having matching symmetrical specimens in each pot as their main focus. Lollipop or conical topiar y work here but conifers, big grasses or larger tender plants such as brugmansia provide a strong look, too. For a really fulsome look, plant around the base of the central specimen with tu
