Designers who specialize in containers are leading a trend toward putting perennials or shrubs or both in pots, adding herbs and touches of frilly lettuces or other seasonal vegetables, and using annual flowers as accents.
It is also good to combine vegetables and herbs in pots, says Sonia Uyterhoeven, who is in charge of home gardening programs at the New York Botanical Garden. “The easiest thing to do is to grow a mesclun mix or arugula, or Asian greens,” she says. “They don’t take up a lot of space,” and you can harvest the greens for a couple of months at least. Lettuce, and herbs, dress up flowerpots with their colours and textures. “It’s a nice reminder for people that vegetables come in different colours,” she says. She makes room among the greens for flowers to add colour.“You can also grow a beet with purple foliage, or mix red and green lettuces, or mustard, which comes in a beautiful red colour so it looks very beautiful.”
Gardeners should be adventurous and splurge out when about planting flowerpots and do not just put them around the front door says Deby Barnhart at Cornell Farm, also in Portland. A pot of flowers by the front door looks good, but it doesn’t really go very far. “The front door is just a place to start,” she says. Don’t forget about the view from the kitchen window, she says, where a pot might look sculpturally dramatic, or along the front walk, on the deck, or by a garden bench, where you’ll enjoy them every day.
Barnhart likes to mix bright flowers with garden vegetables and herbs, or ornamental grasses with plants with golden flowers or foliage.Pellumbi suggests staging pots together to create a rich scene . “I talk with customers about an anchor container,” she says. The anchor is a large pot, full of foliage plants and emphasizing texture. She packs it full of plants with striking variegation or splashes of silver or gold. “Putting the combinations together is just like painting a painting,” she says. She then adds smaller pots around the anchor, echoing the theme of the anchor pot. “I’m a texture freak,” she says. “We can use millet, asters, mums, and pansies, and it’s amazing what you can do.” Just look around you at nature — and then go take a good look around a garden shop, too. You’ll be pleased by what you see when you open your eyes to the beauty of nature.
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