Winter is coming, bring in the New Year with a bright sunny winter garden! Here are some useful tips and inspiration for making beautiful winter gardens in containers. Jazz up your winter outdoor landscape with decorative pots, hanging pots and window boxes filled with seedlings, annuals, perennials, bulbs and evergreens. You can use containers to cover exposed roots during droughts. Containers are also ideal for small spaces, like porches, patios or decks.
A colorful display of fruit and vegetables in winter garden containers brings nature indoors. Winter vegetable baskets and planter boxes attract colorful hostas, nasturtiums and other container plants, which can be placed in individual pots or in groups on the windowsill. Hostas, begonias, tulips and zinnias are perfect for container planting in the fall or winter. Other annuals that make nice containers include marigolds, homes and begonias.
Spring is a wonderful time to prune bushes and re-pot shrubs. Use winter pots to display those valuable plants, pruned, dried or overgrown in the yard. Favorites such as black-eyed susans, honeysuckle, morning glories, sweet pea and purple coneflower make marvelous additions to spring gardens. Favorites for summertime container gardening include hydrangeas, lilies, sunflowers and lupine. These flowers and plants are perfect for summer’s garden parties and events.
Winter visitors bring welcome insects, warm-blooded wildlife and wonderful scent with them into your garden. Snowdrops, ground slush and groundhogs come to feed in the winter. Honey bees, hummingbirds and starlings may be seen flying around your dark pink winter pots. All these insects, along with moths, beetles, lacewings, ants and a host of flies hover just around the entrance to your garden when the weather starts to heat up.
When your garden has all these wonderful things to offer, it is time to consider winter pots and planters. Your pots and planters will provide warmth, shelter, and beauty to your garden. The perfect pot planter will have the following characteristics. It should be water tight, leak proof, have a smooth bottom, have a roomy interior for expanding and drainage openings to avoid having a lot of water collecting on the bottom of the pot.
Waterproof winter pots are easy to keep clean by wiping off the excess water when they are filled with water or allowing it to drain naturally. The most water-resistant pots are made of metal or plastic. If you choose, you can have a planter pot that is painted. Most evergreens do well in painted landscapes since they prefer a darker, damp environment.
Some winter pots are designed with colour in mind. They are usually made of a combination of different colours in order to bring out the best features of your plants. Bright red berries in spring can easily contrast with the muted shades of blue foliage that feature in a plant grown in a pot. In this way, you can add interest and colour to your winter garden while maintaining simplicity and practicality.
Winter containers do not need to be expensive. A simple and well-designed container can be quite suitable for your winter planting needs. When choosing containers for winter gardens, it is also important to consider where you are going to place them. Some flowers and plants require a certain amount of sunlight in order to thrive. If you do not have an area that receives sufficient sun during the day, then either purchase a container that has interior lighting or try placing your winter pots in areas where morning sunshine is possible.
One of the most popular materials used to make winter pots is clay, because of its adaptability and relative affordability. Clay has the ability to retain moisture when placed inside a container and does not dry out as quickly as some other materials. The best candidates for winter pots are evergreens and ivy. As long as the evergreen branches of these plants do not break off or grow too high, their bitter leaves will serve as a protective barrier against snow and freezing rain.
If you live in an area where temperatures plummet throughout the winter, there is another solution to keeping your plants warm. Place several smaller containers around the outside of your house, like old barrels that have been covered with a layer of gravel. Water the gravel underneath your houses and on the outside of the pots, and the roots of the plants will stay nice and moist until warmer temperatures plummet again. This will ensure that they will remain healthy and safe from frost damage, which can lead to disease or even death in some cases.
When choosing a winter potting soil, you should also take into consideration the type of container you will be placing your container in. If you are placing a container in your roof’s rafters, you should pick a potting soil that will be able to handle extreme temperatures without melting. In areas where temperatures plummet fairly regularly, you should pick a container that is made from a material that will not absorb too much of the cold temperatures and will not freeze when the temperatures reach below freezing for several hours.