Tips and useful information on how to keep your pots and baskets looking beautiful.
There’s limited room in containers and during dry spells the compost can dry very quickly. I add water-retaining crystals to the compost which cuts the need for watering quite substantially but poke a finger in the compost every few days, it should feel damp but not soggy. Here are a few other ideas:
Spring flowering plants: Primroses, Primulas (annuals), Pansies, Violas, Bellis
All these flowering plants have one mission in life – setting seed. Once they’ve done that, the plant dies back. So, to ‘trick’ the plant into making more and more flowers, just keep pinching out the fading and dead blooms and you’ll extend the flowering display for as long as possible.
Herbs
Many of the pots and baskets contain herbs. They give lovely texture and offer many shades of greens, greys and purples to work well with the coloured pots and the range of spring flower colours. And they’re also edible! For culinary use, it’s best to harvest before they flower. Otherwise, just gently trim to keep them in shape and enjoy the beautiful scent when you do!
Perennials
The higher priced pots and baskets will always include perennial plants. They offer greater scope for height, structure and texture in the arrangements and once they’ve outgrown their container, they can be carefully transplanted to the garden to grow on to their full size. Alternatively, they can be moved to a larger pot if you want to re-use them in a new season display.
Special note: Heathers. These are acid-loving plants. The ones I’ve used this year are late winter/spring flowering. They are quite slow growing so once they’ve died back, you can pop them into another pot and tuck it out of the way for next year, or plant in your garden. To give them the growing conditions they love, choose an ericaceous compost (sold at the garden centre with the other composts).
Bulbs
If you have any bulbs in your pot or basket – I’ve used the miniature daffodil tete-a-tete this year, as well as the amazingly scented hyacinth. here’s how to look after them. You’re going to get one beautiful show from these and once it’s over, they’ll remain dormant until next year. When the flowers have faded, cut off the flower and the stem BUT, leave the leaves! It can be tricky to do so because they are prone to get a bit floppy and don’t look so great but the leaves are the source of food for the bulb for next year’s flower display so if you tie the leaves up of chop them off, the bulb is deprived and won’t perform so well next spring. If you can’t bear to look at the wilting leaves, carefully lift the bulbs out and plant them in the garden or into a pot which you can tuck out of the way. Hopefully the other plants in the arrangement will do their best to fill the gap!