The Practical Guide to Container Gardening - Softcover

Susan Berry; Bradley, Steve

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1580173292 ISBN 13: 9781580173292

Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC, 2000

Synopsis

Offering boundless possibilities for cleverly decorating small areas indoors and out, container gardening is fun and easy. This practical guide covers everything you need to know to design and maintain your own container garden, including illustrated step-by-step instructions for choosing the best container for each plant, creating seasonal planting schemes, and a variety of proven growing techniques. With detailed profiles of more than 100 plants, you’ll be inspired to experiment and add creative touches to your thriving and beautiful container garden.

About this title

About the Author

Susan Berry is a garden writer and editor who specializes in gardening, design, and craft subjects. Together with Steve Bradley she wrote The Practical Guide to Container Gardening,and is the author of many other books on gardening. She lives in England.


Steven Bradley is director of horticulture at Merrist Wood in England. He is respected as one of Great Britain’s foremost horticulturists.

From the Back Cover

The ultimate guide to adding beautiful, imaginative, and colorful container gardens to your yard, deck, patio, porch, sidewalk, windowsills, balcony, or roof terrace

An invaluable sourcebook of ideas with more than 400 gorgeous color photos that inspire and teach

Clear, simple, and informative instructions for both first-time and experienced gardeners

Specially commissioned photography by leading garden photographer Andrew Lawson

Comprehensive information on what types of containers work best for what plants; seasonal planting schemes; step-by-step planting techniques; care and maintenance; and selecting the right plants

Complete care guidelines, including feeding and watering, pruning, staking, propagation, and dealing with pests and diseases

A fully illustrated A-Z directory of more than 100 species and varieties of plants, with detailed information on how to grow them

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Containers can be employed in a variety of ways to enhance the architecture of the house and the garden itself. In this chapter, all the possible situations for displaying containers are examined, and their particular attributes and constraints are discussed in detail. Patios and roof gardens, entrances and steps, paths and alleys, balconies and verandahs offer many design opportunities for large and small containers, and for container groupings. Choosing an appropriate container style, creating a balanced plant display that is in scale with the architecture of the house, and massing together color and shape in attractive and interesting ways are all key elements in achieving a successful scheme.

Before planning your display, it is important to assess the practical constraints of the situation as part of the overall design consideration - for example, you might want to train your plants to provide shelter on a windy roof terrace or employ tough plants as a screen for more tender specimens, or achieve a good vertical display of plants in a narrow space by using climbers or wall pots. This chapter provides useful guidelines on these more practical questions, as well as inspiration for attractive planting schemes.

Entrances and Steps

First impressions are extremely important, and nowhere is this more true than for the entrance to a house or apartment. Very often the path to the front door or the steps leading up to it offer no actual space for the soil. Containers of plants make the perfect solution, providing a splash of color in what otherwise be a monochromatic area of brickwork or paving. In addition, foliage and flowers can have the effect of softening the hard texture of the stone and concrete walls or paving, creating an altogether less forbidding approach to the building.

Entrances

The architecture of the house provides the backdrop to the container planting and you should take this into account in deciding what container to use. Brick, stucco, shingle, tiles and stone are all used for house walls, while the doorway itself can be in any number of styles from classical to rustic, gothic or colonial. Pick containers that blend with it - not only in shape, color and material, but in size as well so the scale is right. The geometric simplicity of most townhouse doorways is enhanced if you position a container on either side, planted up with identical plants, whether in the form of, say, a pair of clipped box balls or large displays of ox-eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare). For a country home with a rustic door or porch, a looser style of planting combining climbing plants with some perennial would look charming.

Aromatic plants are particularly valuable for entrances. Sweetly scented climbers are always a good choice, as they provide such a wonderful welcome and take up relatively little of the available space on the ground. Among the most popular are honeysuckle, (Lonicera spp.), jasmine and many forms of rose (although some

Edition details

• Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1580173292
• ISBN 13: 9781580173292
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160