Saturday, May 18, 2013

Creating a Container Garden with Mini Plants

 I retrieved a broken cement oval planter from a friend's garden shop.
 Last Fall I used Gorilla Glue to piece the planter together and left it out during the winter months to see if the glue would hold the pot together.
 The glue puffs out a bit when drying, but that was inside the planter pot.
 This month I filled in two missing chunks with Bondo and repainted the outside with white outdoor acrylic house paint.
 When I went to the garden center I looked for miniature plants that were in a gray to white to light green spectrum, to be compatible with the flag stones  on my porch.
I  selected Sedum Makinoi Variegata
,
 Sedum Cauticola,
 and Sempervivum Arachnoideum Hens & Chicks.
 I had an oval plastic pot that just fit inside the concrete planter.
I used potting soil,
 to fill in the spaces after placing the plants in the plastic pot.
 A neighborhood friend gave me some plants that she could not take on her move out of state.  This miniature sedum was adopted, and used with the other three.
 I tucked it into the spaces in the front of the container.
 After sprinkling more potting soil into the gaps, I brushed off extra soil from the Hens & Chicks.
Water was added next, and daily for the next few days.
 The plants responded well on my stone porch which gets afternoon sun.
 This is the planter two weeks later, filing in with new growth.
An inspirational book on container gardens is, For Your Garden, Pots and Containers by Warren Schultz, 1997, Barns &Noble Books, New York.  It has wonderful ideas about combining plants, both flowers and vegetables in an array of planters.

3 comments:

lisa lewicki hermanson said...

Good tips on how to repair the planter ! I really like miniature plantings, so appealing !

elizabeth said...

Well done, Lori!

The Tablescaper said...

It was so nice to hear from you. It's been too long. You did an amazing job on the planter!

- The Tablescaper