Container Gardening How-To: Design a Container

-Container Gardens are the perfect way to add a splash of color to your front entry, deck or patio or even fill in some blank spaces in your beds and boarders. If you’d like to plant up your own pot, start by selecting a relatively good size of container that allows excess water to escape. You can use just about anything from a pot found at your local garden center to repurposing in all object you have at home. Keep in mind, the bigger the better so that you don’t have to water as much. Fill your container with a high quality potting mix. Don’t use garden soil, it doesn’t drain well and it could contain disease or pest organisms. Once your container is nearly full of potting mix, gently pull your plants out of their nursery pots, then carefully squeezing the pot and pulling the root all out. Avoid pulling the plants out by its leaves or stems if you can, you don’t want to injure the plant. Gently massage the rope hole making sure to helps spread the roots out. Otherwise, they could go on circles and end up strangling your plant. One guideline for easy container design that realty works is the spiller, thriller and filler technique. Find the thriller plant, there should be a container’s focal point. Here we have burgundy leaf hibiscus then select the spiller to cascade over the side of the pot and soften the edges. Lastly, fill in the spaces with a filler plant such as this Euphorbia. Add more putting mix around your plants rope holes, fill in the container up to the top. Keep in mind your putting mix settle a little bit after it does settle you have something of a lip between the potting mix and the top of the pot so that when your water, the moisture pulls there instead of running right over the sides.

SOURCE:http://www.bhg.com/gardening/container/basics/container-gardening-how-to-design-a-container/