Containers for every season

By C.W. Cameron

For the AJC

Container gardens offer an easy way to brighten up a corner of a patio or flank a front door. One reason they’re so popular is they don’t require the time, space or money it takes to maintain a full-blown flower border.

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Hyosub Shin, hshin@ajc.com Lisa Bartlett, owner of Gardens to Go, an Atlanta-based company specializing in container gardens, shows three container gardens; summer pots, fall pots, and winter pots. Bartlett is preparing containers and planting them with fall blooming plants at Ladyslipper Nursery in Woodstock.

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Hyosub Shin, hshin@ajc.com Lisa Bartlett, owner of Gardens to Go, an Atlanta-based company specializing in container gardens, squeezes roots, but not hurting them, to fit into containers as she plants for fall pots at Ladyslipper Nursery in Woodstock. Time to remove the summer annuals from containers and fill them with plants that will bloom through fall and winter.

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Many containers look their best for just one season. Then what? You can empty your container and let it sit until next year, you can toss out everything and start over with all new plants, or you can plant a container that, with a little tweaking, will look good in all four seasons.

Lisa Bartlett of Gardens to Go is a master at tweaking containers. The secret to her success is interchangeable plants.

Instead of pulling every plant out of its growing pot and mixing them all together in the container, she creates a living ring of trailing greenery around the edge of her container, and then fills in the centerpiece with a showstopper plant that’s left in its pot. When it’s finished with its moment of glory, out it pops and another showstopper plant is dropped into the waiting hole. No need to replant the entire container.

We met with Bartlett at Ladyslipper Nursery in Woodstock, a nursery that carries unusual perennials and annuals. Bartlett demonstrated her technique on a container that had been gorgeous all summer but was on its last legs as fall arrived.

First, a lecture on the three elements of a well-planted container. “I know you’ve heard it before: You’ve got to have a spiller, a filler and a thriller,” said Bartlett as she tore the container apart.

A ring of variegated ivy served as the spiller, cascading over the edges of the pot. One of Bartlett’s money-saving tips is to buy one large well-grown ivy plant and then cut it into pieces to place around the edge of the container. Ivy is tough; pulling or cutting the root ball apart won’t set it back a bit. Using a mature plant gives your container “instant age.”

The filler in the summer version of this container was a Boston fern. Out it came, and she set it aside. And the thriller was a trailing red coleus that had seen better days. It was ready for the compost bin.

Left with a ring of green, Bartlett added several wire vine (Muehlenbeckia axillaries) plants to provide a change of texture from the ivy. “When you’re going into fall and winter, and flower color will be a little sparse, the contrasting leaf size, color and shape will really make this container a standout. Green will carry you through more than color ever will,” she said.

Then she went to her filler using a few pots of parsley, an herb that thrives in cool weather, and cool weather annuals like flowering kale and cabbage and pansies. “What’s available to me right now is pansies, but if you can get violas, they’re a great addition. They can take more shade, and their smaller flowers don’t require deadheading, so the container needs less maintenance to keep looking good,” Bartlett said.

In the center, she dropped in a pot of a new lavender double aster just now coming on the market (Aster novi-belgii ‘Peter III’) as her thriller, and then squeezed in another half-dozen filler plants. “Don’t be afraid to really manipulate the root balls. You can squeeze and shape the roots to fit the space you’re filling in,” she advised.

As a final touch, she added a scarecrow to give height to the container and carry it through the fall. Bartlett is a big proponent of accessorizing her containers, suggesting a terra cotta pumpkin pot with a candle for Halloween or an arrangement of gourds for Thanksgiving.

Ready to demonstrate how the pot could be transformed for winter and early spring, Bartlett popped out the aster and dropped in a planted color bowl, the kind readily available at any garden center. Then she dropped in a small potted evergreen that would be charming adorned with holiday lights and a few sprigs of holly. A little drink of water and she had one revitalized container ready to go.

Remember that Boston fern she pulled out of the summer container? It won’t survive the winter cold, so most people would discard it, but Bartlett had a better idea.

She ruthlessly ripped out the center. Ferns are tough, like ivy, and the plant won’t suffer. Soon she was left with just a circle of fern. Taking her clippers to the remaining fronds, she cut them down to 5 inches. The ring of fern was starting to look like a wreath, which was exactly the effect she was looking for.

This ring of greenery will survive the winter indoors, and can serve as the green “skirt” for a center planting of winter-flowering bulbs or a Christmas cactus. Used on the dining room table as a centerpiece for special occasions, then moved back to a sunny spot for the winter, the fern will survive until spring when it can go back outdoors.

But this time it will keep company with a summer-flowering showstopper in its center to brighten another season and keep the cycle going.