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Out Door Gardening In Pots And Boxes: Advice Great Bulbs

As a group, bulbs are outstanding plants colorful, showy, and generally easy to grow. Many have evergreen foliage; with others, the leaves ripen after flowering and the bulbs are stored and started again, year after year. Some bulbs are hardy, others, tender, though what is and is not hardy in a particular area is a matter of winter temperature averages. In cold regions, tender types tuberous begonias, gloxinias, calla lilies, and gloriosa lilies can be treated like summer container plants. This gives the gardener a wide variety to grow from earliest spring to late fall.

Agapanthus or Blue Lily of the Nile. Fleshy-rooted evergreen plant, with strap leaves, often grown in tubs and urns on terraces and steps during the summer, when the tall blue spikes unfold. Culture is easy, but plants require a well-lighted, frost proof room or greenhouse in winter.

This is an old-time favorite, often seen in gardens of Europe.
Calla Lily. Showy, hardy outdoors in warmer regions, but a tender pot plant in the North. Most familiar is the white one with large, shiny, heart-shaped leaves. Start bulbs indoors in February or March in rich soil and, when weather settles, transfer to large pots and take outdoors. Calla lilies do well in full sun or part shade, are heavy feeders and need much water. There is also a dainty yellow with white-spotted leaves. Rest bulbs after foliage ripens and grow again.

Out Door Gardening In Pots And Boxes: Advice for Biennials & Herbs

Biennials
Canterbury-Bells. Choice biennial, with long-lasting bells in purple, lavender, blue, pink, and white. Worth the effort, even if they die after flowering. In the spring, garden centers offer budded specimens. For dramatic compositions, group several together. You can grow your own from seed sown in June or July.

Foxgloves. Delightful, with tall spikes covered with bells. Sow seed in June or July and winter young plants in cold frame or garden, covering with marsh hay or evergreen branches. Old-fashioned kinds have bells on one side of the spikes, but the new English hybrids have flowers all around the stems. Pot-grown rosettes are available in spring.

Out Door Gardening In Pots And Boxes: Tips For Growing Trees Shrubs & Vines

Trees, shrubs, and vines are basic plants for the container garden. They provide height and background, accent, and shade. Since nurserymen and garden centers offer them in bushel baskets, large tin cans or simply balled and burlapped, they are easily planted in permanent containers.

Growing trees and shrubs in tubs and boxes is a widespread practice in climates with scant rainfall, like our Southwest and the Mediterranean countries, but gardeners everywhere can treat them as specimen plants. They lend distinction and grace to the large terrace or outdoor sitting area and are effective at doorways, along walks, on driveways, on terraces, and around swimming pools.

Petunias are indispensable for the container garden. Gay and colorful, easy to grow, free flowering, available in a variety of types, and generally free of problems, they are really a wonderful annual. If you have space for but one flowering plant, by all means choose petunias. Grow them from seed or buy young seedlings in flats in spring. Either way, you will have quick, satisfying results.

Out Door Gardening In Pots And Boxes: Advice for Beautiful Window Boxes

Visitors to Europe, flower-minded or not, return with enthusiasm for the gay window boxes they have seen the red geraniums in Germany and Austria, the tuberous begonias of Switzerland, these so perfect they seem to have been moved right out of a catalog! In fact, Switzerland suggests glorious possibilities for this country. How beautiful our cities might be if railroad terminals, apartment houses, department stores, and office buildings could all be decorated with window boxes, as they are in that small mountain country.

In Germany, there was a strong trend toward pot gardening. According to a sketch of the seventeenth-century garden of Christopher Peller in Nurenberg, urns and pots were lavishly scattered about. Around the beds, "there are lower stone borders with ornamental pots set on them: these contain plants of many kinds, with orange-trees and other costly foreign plants that have to pass the winter in a hothouse."

A garden of the same date belonging to Johannes Schwindt, a burgomaster of Frankfort, comprised an enclosure "made of green lattice-work with pillars, windows, and gates," with pots of flowering plants at the windows and on benches.

Dove Tree or Davidia. Where reliably hardy (a specimen at Arnold Arboretum, Boston, blooms periodically), an unusual tree, with large white bracts among heart-shaped leaves in spring. Requires special care, but is worth the effort.

Franklinia or Gordonia. Like the dove tree, also requiring special attention. Single, camellia-like, cream-white flowers open in late summer and continue until frost. Leaves are colorful in fall. Barely surviving winters around Boston, this is reliably hardy from New York City southward.

Fringe Tree. Large shrub or small tree, with fluffy, white flowers appearing with unfolding foliage in late spring. Shows up strikingly against evergreens.

Out Door Gardening In Pots And Boxes: Tips for Weeping Willows & Other Trees

Weeping Willows.
Among the best trees for rooftops because they withstand wind. Fast growing, they need periodic replacement, but young plants are moderately priced. The Golden Weeping Willow has bright yellow twigs in winter and chartreuse catkins in early spring.

This is only a partial list of hardy trees for the container garden. Almost any kind can be grown if in scale and given the necessary care. Do not overlook fastigiate forms upright lindens, oaks, sugar and Norway maples since these take up little space.

Roses.
Many kinds are suited to containers. Floribundas are more floriferous than hybrid teas and can be used as low hedges or in groups. On terraces and patios include hybrid teas for color, form, and fragrance if you can face the spraying, etc.

Where hardiness is questionable, store in a cool place, as a garage or closed-in breezeway, in winter. In pots and window boxes grow the delightful miniatures.

Rhododendrons. Broad, glossy, evergreen leaves and showy flowers in red, rose, pink, purple, or white. Give sun for a few hours a day for richer bloom. In winter, put in a protected spot to avoid wind burning. Rhododendrons need a peaty, humus, acid soil and plenty of water.