85 Yamagami’s Garden Center
July 14, 2023
87 Succulent Gardens
August 11, 2023
Pots for More Summer Beauty
G ood gawd almighty it is freakin’ HOT!!! If you live in the Sacramento Valley or other sweaty location you know what I’m talking about! So here’s the hot question of the day: in these sizzling temps, how can anything in the garden be looking pretty right now?!
As always (no apologies) I’m here for you with answers!
First, choose plants wisely and you can have beauty and even blossoms (!) all summer long.
Second, pots! Easy to swap out plants as needed. Easy to position for best visibility or where you need more color. Fun to experiment with plant combos. Easy to manage for healthy plants.
For example, in my garden right now (late July) you’ll see petunias blossoming like CRAZY in pots…
Petchoa ‘Supercal Premium Caramel Yellow’
In the past I didn’t have much luck with petunias. You’d get them home from the nursery and within 2 weeks they’d start looking scrappy and then catch every disease imaginable.
But since I discovered some varieties that don’t present these problems, I am INTO petunias for summer color—just like AP!!
And as you can see, ‘Carmel Yellow’ is fantastic for summertime pots…
I featured ‘Caramel Yellow’ in post 59, and for a couple years now, she has been propagating nicely.
Can you imagine a prettier display on your deck in summer than this?…
I have a black square container that previously housed Hellebores which I relocated into pots from Alden Lane Nursery.
Now that container holds beautiful white petunias along with gazania flowers.
Even in this godforsaken heat those petunias are performing exactly as instructed! The white blossoms pair well with the granite boulders beneath, and to give extra umph, I placed black polished Mexican rocks around the pot. Just lovely.
Here’s a pot I featured in post 79…
In that photo the clematis had yet to peak.
Now—later in summer—from the other side of the pot you can see both clematis and violas blooming at the same time. (Genius!)
Wish you had more summer color in your pots? If you want a fast and easy way to get some, buy a whole flat of zinnias in multiple colors and then shove them in your pots!
VOILÁ…
I love zinnias!!!!
I have clients who apparently feel the need to wait for high summer to redo their yards. When temperatures reach 100 degrees, zinnias are my Go-To for a quick color spot.
(Good lord, Clients, I’m also available all fall and winter when I’m not so cranky.)
Another hot summer beauty for pots? Cannas…
Gorgeous! The other day I was floating in the pool cooling off and the sun was filtering through the bamboo and hitting that canna just right. It looked so pretty, for a moment I could almost ignore the thousand damn bamboo leaves fluttering down on the pool and on me.
I bought that canna strictly for the burgundy foliage—the stunning orange blossom is just the cherry on top. It’s growing in a 4-foot-high iron container that I couldn’t fit in the frame without standing so far back you’d need a magnifying glass to see the canna.
Here’s another canna in a pot I bought before I taught myself to “go big or go home” when it comes to buying pots…
That pot is about 2-feet high and 10-inches wide. You can see only its rim, but it has ridges much like a bamboo shoot and it’s brown. Ugh! (As you must know, “brown” and “beige” are not in my vocabulary.)
I could never find a use for that ugly pot until Mike built me a metal retaining wall that slopes down at one end. (Instead of sloping, to end the wall full height would mean digging out a bunch of plants, and why would Mike think I’d want to do that?)
I placed the brown pot at the end of the slope to help hold the soil there in place. I wanted a tall vertical plant for it which I thought would help give a “finished” look. The canna was the perfect choice. It’s been adding beauty to the scene for 6 years at least.
I use small and large galvanized troughs to hold newly purchased plants (from my adventures!) and for planting my babies grown from seed.
It’s an easy way to watch how plants grow and perform for a year in my zone. Once they prove themselves worthy, they get transplanted from here into my gardens.
A year sounds like a long time to watch a plant grow, but you know I am a very patient person.
Unless you’re satisfied with resorting to last-minute zinnia’s, having a growing area also lets plants mature for what we all crave in our yards…
MORE SUMMER BEAUTY!
