How to plant designer containers with Style!/Garden Style nw

Hi everybody and welcome to Garden Style. So today we are going to cover how to plant designer containers. I just happen to have a couple that are sitting in the front of my garage and I will go over with you some of the three basic steps that it takes to plant a beautiful filled up awesome summer container. So here we go. Okay, so I have two of these tall containers that sit in front of the garage. So we definitely need something that's going to add height to the pot as well as be able to fill it out. Now I've already emptied all the old soil out of these pots and I have actually inserted some coffee filters down in the bottom as well as gravel because I didn't want to fill the entire thing with soil being these most of these plants that I'm putting in today are annuals. But you definitely need the drainage. So I have filled them up with their coffee filters. We have a little bit of gravel and then I put the rest of the soil inside. Now the soil I'm using today has Osmocote in it. It's a slow release fertilizer that will get them through most of the summer. The bag claims at least six months so that's plenty. But I will find that I'm going to end up fertilizing these plants probably by June at least every other week with a soluble fertilizer. That's something you would put in the water and just water them with it just to give them that extra boost and keep them nice and fluffy. So I will zoom in a little bit so you can watch how I put this together. Now I have filled this container to about an inch to an inch and a half from the top of the pot in here and the soil is very fluffy. It's got a lot of peat and perlite in it and that just helps retain the water during the summertime because your containers dry out way faster than anything you would put in the ground in your garden. So three-step process once you've got your soil in is first of all you need a Thriller plant and the Thriller is usually the first plant that goes in and this just happens to be one of those cordyline plants. It actually has a variegated leaf to it and it'll get a little bit taller here but I didn't want it to get too tall. But this guy being you're looking at it looking at the container from the front I'm going to set him towards the back of the container and then I will put the Thrillers in the middle and then plants that spill over the edge. So that's kind of your three-step process. So start with your Thriller first you fill in with your fillers here in the middle and then your spillers will end up on the outside edge and fall over the edges. So here we go. So the cordyline plant that I'm using right now is something at least here in the northwest because our winters are cold but they don't get super cold he will probably just survive and I'll be able to actually put him out in the garden next year. Now when you pull plants out and their roots are all compacted like this it's just got a very stiff root memory. It's a real good idea to loosen them up. This guy is so anxious to go. You just loosen them up a little bit and kind of massage it around the edges and then I try and find the right side to put in the little bigger little hole and you just put them in so that he's right at the surface of the pot. Press them down in there. Okay, one down. Then I found these beautiful Martha Washington geraniums and these aren't actually a geranium they're actually a pelargonium. The geranium version of these is actually a perennial version of the same flower but they bloom and bloom and bloom all summer long. They also love the sun and these pots do get blasted in the afternoon with sun. So I'm just shedding off some of the old picky leaves off the bottom and these make a great filler plant and the root the root balls on these aren't too bad. In fact they're not bad at all. So I just tickle them just a little bit on the bottoms and I try and tear out any old dead dying blooms that are on here and I actually have two of these that I'm going to put in. So I'm going to put one here up close to where my thriller plant is in the corner line. I have a second one right here. Root balls aren't bad at all. I'm going to put them side by side here it's all as part of the plant towards the back and already I've created what I call a triangle. So you have your center one here in the back and then you've got a little triangle with three plants in here and next I have one extra filler here I want to throw in a little bit extra and that's this little guy and this is actually a Nemesia Glacier White. That's the name of the color and I decided to put him kind of like right in the center right here and he will actually bush up and out like this. I wanted to add a little white in there this is going to be like a pink white and purple kind of theme that we're putting in and then one of my favorite spiller plants is Bacopa and they have these beautiful lavender flowers and they just get cake and these guys will just drape all the way down the sides of the pot. So I have a couple of these I'm going to insert in there and I lean them a little bit towards the outside edge that helps them start to fill in like that. I'll place one on the other side and just lean it towards the outside edge of the pot. I'll be coming back in here of course to fill in any gaps where need more soil and then my next favorite all-time trailing plant is called a potato vine and this is a beautiful lime green and he's a little dry. I'll give him some water here. I just watered him yesterday and I need a little bit more but we intend to do that anyway. Okay and I'm going to stick him right smack in the middle and that is all you need. This is about a 14 inch pot and I've got one two three four five six seven plants in here and that's pretty crammed but these guys are annuals for the most part except for maybe the cordyline that's sitting in the back so I'm a true believer just you know I'm about instant gratification anyway so I pack my containers and allow you know a little space so that everybody can fill out but you'll find here in a couple of months you won't even be able to see the top of the pot. All these plants are just going to fill right in and fill right out so I'm going to add a little more soil to this water them in and move on to the next one. So there you go and we have some height here with our thriller plant and then we have our fillers here in the middle and then some spillers that will be sitting around here on the edge. Now I probably could have added two more plants here to the center but I know how voracious these bacopas are and they will actually fill this in and this potato vine he'll just go insane and probably in about two months this potato vine will be like this and actually hitting the ground and I'm going to end up trimming him every week because they grow so fast so always a good idea to water them in. I wash the dirt off the leaves and it helps settle the dirt down and then come back and check on it in about an hour just to make sure that you don't need to add more soil to the edges but the first watering definitely helps kind of settle everything in and get it all settled in around the roots and this guy this whole thing will just be going berserk up here in the next three to four weeks as soon as they get the roots in and they get established. So just a nice little rule for containers being this happened to be a tall one just didn't want anything too high so it doesn't cover up some of the artwork that I have sitting on the wall here but there you go that's your start they always look a little funny to start with but give it a couple of weeks and it's going to start filling right in okay