However, I had a situation here where I had quite a few planters which needed filling, and I had to deal with that, like it or not. Not only that, but our planters were of quite modest proportions, and so we would be unable to create the sort of overflowing splendour that other gardens such as Powis Castle were so famous for at the time. I could only use compact plants, and not in exuberant cascading combinations. Yet I still wanted them to look interesting. How was I going to achieve that? Well, I can say here and now that I didn't. Not to my satisfaction, at any rate. The pictures I will show you are not impressive, because, frankly, I didn't give enough time to the problem. I did, however come up with one solution which I think is worth learning from.
Our larger planters I tended to use to plant out combinations which worked with our bedding schemes, as these features were within the area with the hexagonal beds, and we have already seen plenty of pictures of those, detailing how we used plants which complemented the Dahlias in the summer or the Tulips in the spring, often using the same plants in the central urn and the marble trough as could be seen in the beds.
The marble trough is something I have few photographs of, but this one shows the sort of thing we were doing in the early years, with dwarf red Tulips matching those in the central urn -
Could have done better, methinks. This was crying out for something huge and billowing.
Even much later we were still doing the dull Tulip-motif-repeating thing, this time in the stone urns either side of the Library Steps -
Flanking the steps to the Walled Garden from the main drive, I tried various things such as dwarf peas, which were quite attractive and smelled nice -
but eventually I found myself dissatisfied. As is appropriate for someone of my personality type, I wanted more, so in odd corners of my life I looked around for something different, and I lighted upon this -
Amaryllis 'Papilio'. What I liked about this was not only the interesting flowers, but also that they made a decent display in a small container, and that they would be totally unexpected out there in March in time for an early Easter, when a sudden sharp frost might kill them. That was what gave me the idea. I grew them on in the greenhouse during the latter part of the winter in readiness for planting out just before opening in the spring. I grew them in plastic pots which would just fit inside the stone urns with a little air space around them, and then when the time came to set them out, I would simply place the plastic pots inside the stone outer, and fill up the gaps with hydroleca. This would enable me to remove the pots to protection if bad weather was threatened and replace them when it had passed. Hydroleca is a very lightweight expanded clay aggregate which we used to use on the greenhouse benches in place of gravel. It had the advantage of being able to hold a certain amount of water and being easily portable. It looked like this -
The result of this policy was that I could be more experimental, and could change tired-looking pots whenever they needed it for others kept behind the scenes for a bit of coddling. Amaryllis 'Papilio' - a nice plant seen in an unusual situation -
As you will have come to expect by now, I lack the photographic evidence to show you for some of this, but suffice it to say that I was still in experimental mode by the time I left the job. I was growing Mediterranean trees such as Albizzias for container foliage effect, I still had the Eupatorium atrorubens as a fallback choice. I even tried Gloriosia rothschildiana trained up bamboo tripods in the stone urns by the Library steps one year, with something cascading at the base. The illustration is an internet picture, not one of our own display -
Other experiments were with grasses, which, although the foliage colour didn't really work, didn't announce itself from afar, as it were, still gave me things to think about as regards shape and habit for the future -
So that's how we have to see it - as a work in progress. Gardens are always so. They are never finished, always capable of development and improvement. And the one thing I always strove to avoid was getting bored.
And if you want a stunning seasonal display in containers, then I recommend growing a succession of plants in plastic pots to plunge in your more ornamental outers. Ring the changes through the season. The days of the single idea should be long past.
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