Great Ideas for Planters
Planter Ideas
Planters are relatively new attractions in gardens. Contemporary houses are often designed with built-in planters, and traditional homes have them in entranceways, on terraces, and next to garages. Especially on the West Coast, houses and gardens often feature planters of durable materials such as concrete, brick, or blue stone.
There are two types of planters—the permanent planter attached to the house and the movable one bought or constructed to suit a particular need. Some gardeners maintain several for replacement as plants pass their prime. Planters can be rectangular, square, oblong, triangular, hexagonal, circular, or just about any shape you can think of. Like pots and tubs, their value is largely aesthetic.
Permanent Planters
Stationary planters for outdoors must be planned with care. Those attached to entranceways or the front of a house should be designed at the proper scale and proportion, and have good drainage facilities from the start. Unlike the portable type, they cannot be moved or easily replaced, so you have to get them right when you install them. Be careful not to place them over ledges or near other obstructions through which water cannot easily pass. Usually these planters are open to the ground. If the soil has a high clay content, some should be removed and replaced with a layer of stones or cinders to be sure you have enough drainage.
Movable Planters
Mobile planters can be carried, pushed, or wheeled to various positions. Desirable construction materials include wood—with redwood, cedar and cypress heading the list—metals, fibreglass, plastic and various synthetic products. Whatever you buy, make yourself or have made, be certain beforehand that you know what the material looks like, how it behaves under your weather conditions and how durable it is. A greater investment in the beginning will pay off in the end.
Choosing the Plants
When selecting the plant material, give thought to scale. In large planters, trees and shrubs, including needle and broad-leaved evergreens, should be grown. With annuals, rely on tall kinds, like cosmos, African marigolds and cleome. If planters are long, repeat one of the plants for unity and harmony. Usually some trailing plants are needed along the edge to soften it.
A permanent planter requires trees and shrubs for year-round effect. Except in the very large planters attached to big buildings, rely on small or dwarf trees only. Among trees for colder climates, consider Japanese maple and its varieties, ornamental magnolias, flowering cherries, including the weeping forms, Tatarian maple, flowering dogwood, birches, dwarf forms of Scotch, red, and Japanese black pines, upright arborvitaes and junipers and fastigiate trees, as the upright European hornbeam or linden.
The flowering crabs are superb, especially the white-flowering Sargent, which remains low and spreading.
Among evergreen and deciduous shrubs, there are the Japanese yews, spreading and ground-cover types of junipers, dwarf arborvitae, shrubby evergreen euonymus, skimmia, cherry laurel, mahonias, leucothoe, dwarf Hinoki cypress, the convexleaved and other hollies, camellias, azaleas, slender deutzia, dwarf rhododendrons, fothergilla, flowering quinces, heathers, and the mugo pine. Good barberries include the Wintergreen (Berberis julianae), Korean (B. koreana), Mentor (B. mentorensis), three-spine (B. triacanthophora), and warty (B. verruculosa). The dwarf forms of the Japanese barberry, including Crimson Pygmy and the low Berberis thunbergi minor, are superior plants.
Cotoneasters are valuable because they stay small, have attractive foliage and red berries, develop a loose, informal habit, grow in a variety of situations and withstand wind. Certainly worth considering are the bearberry (Coton-easter dammeri), rock spray (C. horzontalis), the small-leaved cotoneaster (C. microphylla), and the delightful prostrate form, Cotoneaster adpressa.
Several specimens of trees or shrubs make a pleasing combination with one type of ground cover or trailer, like dwarf Japanese yew with English ivy, Korean boxwood with myrtle, or dwarf Hinoki cypress with pachysandra. Other good ground covers to combine with evergreens include pachistima, prostrate junipers, bearberry or arctostaphyllos, yellowroot, sweet fern, trailing euonymus, as the purple-leaf type (Euonymus fortunei coloratus), leio-phyllum or sand myrtle, ajuga, and various thymes and sedums.
Flowers for Color
Planters also need flowers for color. You can start with spring bulbs, like daffodils and tulips, continue with annuals, and finish the season with chrysanthemums. For a pleasing edging, there is the permanent English ivy. Except for small planters, flowering plants are best combined with shrubs
Photo credit to http://www.flickr.com/photos/63437084@N00/620543074/
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