Tips for Making Container Gardens

Mix plants with at least three textures of foliage to make a container garden interesting. Use plenty of plants that are foliage plants (with no flowers) in your designs. In most cases, foliage color, leaf shape, and texture are just as important as the flowers themselves. Some good foliage contrasts would include: downy with glossy; dark with gray; small with large; yellow with violet. Use colorful foliage (like Coleus) to “echo” the color of flowers in the container. Vary the shape of the flowers in the container garden to add interest. Bicolor flowers are becoming more available and are great for color echoing. Sometimes you just have to do some “snipping and tucking” of faster growing plants when they are mixed in with slower growing ones. Otherwise, you will lose the slower ones and your design gets destroyed. Vegetative annuals mix well with other annuals, perennials, tropicals, and bulbs. Everything and anything goes as long as it is pleasing to the eye of your customer. Nothing lasts forever! Container gardens need to be gardened. Plants in container gardens need to be trimmed, dead-headed and replaced.

Grow together combinations

Grow-Together Combinations
Good to Use	Do Not Work Well
One vigorous foliage plant in the center	Growth retardants
Upright verbenas, double impatiens, geraniums	Rampant growers
Foliage plants for neutral color & texture	Tall plants
Summer bloomers for summer market	Slow growers
Plants with long necks	Creeping and very compact plants
Various textures and forms	Too many fine textures
Analogous color harmonies	Salmon with violet or fuchsia with bright red
Slight succession of bloom for earlier market	Extremes in bloom times
Odd numbers of plants	Only two plants of one species

refrence: Container Gardens