Pared-Down Pots

Pots as big bouquets are so over - gardeners want simple, striking container plantings that are easy to care for. As tempting as it is to squeeze a bunch of little rootballs into a pot, you end up with a maintenance nightmare of a container that requires constant watering, feeding and deadheading to maintain its looks over the summer. Bainbridge artists David Lewis and George Little helped change my thinking with their single specimen pots that are striking, dramatic, and easy to care for. So I've been playing around with one plant, or just a couple per pot; the trick is always to match plant to pot in both size and looks.

Here are a couple of pared-down pots I planted up last week; one for sun, one for shade, both needing water only a couple of times a week. Or so I hope. I'll keep photographing simplified pots when I find good examples and posting them here.....

Sedum 'Sweet and Sour' its pale variegation shown off by a matte black pleated pot. This sedum has enough going for it to star in a pot all by itself.

 

A fatter pot, in the shade, with the bold, pleated leaves of perennial Rodgersia podophylla underplanted with the striped Japanese sedge Carex morrowii 'Evergold' which carries the pot through the winter when the rodgersia dies down. Or anyway, that's the plan...A big perennial like rodgersia is difficult to fit into a little garden like mine, and it'll live happily in a pot for several years at least....

Comments

[Loree / danger garden]

I am so happy to see the cram-a-million plants in a pot trend go away, I've long been a proponent of one plant per pot. I have to say though that I've never heard the phenomenon called "bouquet in a pot"...a very apropos label!

That Rodgersia is amazing! So big, healthy and colorful.

[Mohammed Faisal al]

the rodgersia is absolutely stunning. I don't think its podophylla as the leaf shape differs alot. May I be so bold as to ask where you got it?