The Best Plants for Pots Bob Brown
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
©Bob Brown The best plants for pots Bob Brown Fig. 1 Heuchera ‘Citronelle’ y ideal plant is one You can squeeze in a pot can be arranged to be instant M that’s evergreen, with of Agastache mexicana gardens – a bit like the wonderfully colourful and ‘Red Fortune’ between a main door into the house at shapely foliage, and has phlox and helenium or Great Dixter or a stand at twelve months of flower. cover a declining oriental Chelsea. Arrange them in Contrary to comments made poppy with a pot of harmonious groups mixing on Gardeners’ Question Eucomis comosa ‘Sparkling textures, colours, shapes and Time such plants do exist, Burgundy’, only because sizes. or almost exist. I’m a pretty they’ve got their own living The only time I plant laid-back fellow really, but system – root and aerial several kinds of plant in listening to radio experts space, nutrients and water. one pot is when I want a and getting ever so slightly Having a few pots handy continuous succession. Such worked up go hand in hand. is good for making your pots need to stand alone and borders burgeon. I mostly probably merit something reckon on planting single posher than black plastic. Any plant which is good plants or groups of the Some plants are simply same plant in single pots, not suitable for pots, so don’t enough to go into my black plastic pots which’ll even try. The commonest tiny garden, where every disappear into the shadows is agapanthus. You get two plant needs to give lots of within the border – no one weeks of flower and fifty payback for the space it will suspect they’re there weeks of dull foliage, or dull and you can mix unlikely foliage and compost if the occupies, is good enough companions that normally plant is herbaceous. Not to go into a pot. need different growing good enough. After a year conditions if together they or two the packed roots will make a pleasing temporary force the plant up from the Growing plants in pots combination. pot like toothpaste and it can increase the apparent If your pots are not used will stop flowering because productivity of your garden. to fill out the border they you are being too unkind. 13 Contrary to ‘expert’ advice, cheering on my return agapanthus do not respond home on dreich December well to the Miss Whiplash afternoons and covered in ©Bob Brown method of gardening – delicate white flower from responding to deprivation August to October. It’s and being pot-bound by been there since he gave throwing more and more it to me in 2006. ‘Pink flower (but still only over Pearls’ (fig. 2), also bred by two weeks). Plant it in the Thierry, has more ordinary ground where the sun will soft-pink and brown foliage fall on the neck of the plant. but unbelievable quantities They’ll be happier. of pretty pink flowers from April till October. 12-month plants Dan Heims’ x Heucherella Fig. 2 Heuchera ‘Pink Pearls’ Most heucheras will give 12 ‘Redstone Falls’ is as months of good foliage and good as the foregoing. It whatever you choose their cascades over the sides of foliage will never be boring, the pot with buff, pink- usually changing colour red and orange foliage and ©Bob Brown when growing strongly and has white spring flowers. with appealing contrasts I recently sat on a panel between overwintered reviewing heuchera AGMs foliage and spring growth. and discovered how out- Plant three to a pot if the of-date my knowledge and pot’s big enough. My choice experience is. Those which is Heuchera ‘Citronelle’ had their awards confirmed (fig. 1), bred by Thierry or newly awarded are Delabroye. It’s a hybrid of probably going to be even H. villosa and, so far, vine- better. They’ll be listed by weevil-proof. I have a big the RHS by the time this is potful sitting outside my published. Fig. 3 Euonymus japonicus Exstase front door, unbelievably Some plants are effectively useful only for foliage. Euonymus fortunei and E. japonicus have several outstanding evergreen forms ©Bob Brown with coloured foliage. My favourite is E. japonicus Exstase (the Dutch word for ecstasy) (fig. 3). This looks so ordinary until you own it and realise its year- round display of clean bright yellow stays below 50cm even after years of growth. In winter it joins Heuchera ‘Citronelle’ by the front door to lift my spirits. Any Fig. 4 Trachelospermum asiaticum ‘Summer Sunset’ variegated E. fortunei with 24 coloured leaves will be good, My experience of and like the heucheras these Acanthus mollis ‘Tasmanian change colour dynamically Angel’ and A. ‘Whitewater’ with the seasons. Pushed to (figs 6a & b) when planted ©Bob Brown the back with a dark wall in the ground has not been behind it, E. fortunei will start good, both dwindling and to climb. Climbing climbers dying within 2 or 3 years. in pots are a problem so However they do well in remember this. pots. Mine are in full shade Trachelospermums are and I think this is important. also (self-clinging) climbers A. mollis is a winter grower (for N, S, E or W walls). and might be summer Fig. 5 Trachelospermum asiaticum If you abandon them dormant if the weather is ‘Theta’ surrounded by space rather dry enough. A. spinosus than suitable climbing is dormant in winter media, they will flop and grows in summer. sideways, set flower and ‘Tasmanian Angel’ and ©Bob Brown cease trying. This is true ‘Whitewater’ seem to grow of almost all climbers. T. all year and are splendid asiaticum and T. jasminoides enough in winter to have have so many positive caught the eye of the plant qualities they approach photographer Jonathan that 10/10, 12-month ideal. Buckley. They’re both They are collected and variegated. Strongly growing bred in Japan as cult plants foliage is cream and goes so there are many foliage speckly green-and-cream as forms with different colours it ages. The flowers are pink and textures, evergreen from a cream spike. Both and with bunches of cream burn horribly in sun so a pot jasmine-like highly scented sits in full shade. flowers. My favourite is Another plant from the T. asiaticum ‘Summer southern hemisphere is Sunset’ (fig. 4) which I getting everyone’s attention Figs 6a & b Acanthus ‘Whitewater’ keep as a pet in the black at the moment, sold as plastic equivalent of a long Senecio Angel Wings. It’s tom. The young leaves are unusual as a silver/white orange-red and mature leaved plant in having broad yellow and green. Sun foliage. The colouring is ©Bob Brown must be necessary for the defence against high UV redness to develop because light, but normally this I have one planted to climb results in leaf dissection a panel fence which is too. The name Angel Wings entirely in deep shade and is a marketing ploy. It’s it’s only yellow and green. simply Senecio candidans T. asiaticum ‘Theta’ (fig. 5) (fig. 7) which grows wild has long, pointed, dusky on beaches in the Falkland grey-green evergreen foliage Islands. Always look to with a pale midrib and makes where a plant grows wild to a bushy plant in a pot. discover how and where and 35 the answer because I can modify the rooting medium and keep competitors back. ©Bob Brown Passion (fig. 8) has classic, scented red flowers held strongly on short stalks, makes a neat tump of a plant with grey foliage and is rarely without flowers even in winter. I rate it 10/10. Memories (fig. 9) which is white gets only 9.5. It’s like the old favourite ‘Mrs Sinkins’ but much better, with a fabulous clove Fig. 7 Senecio candidans scent and flowers for almost as long as Passion. if to grow it. These beaches There are other classic have a mean temperature very long-flowering plants. of 4°C with no frost. 4°C The best-known must be ©Bob Brown with no frost! That means Coronilla valentina. Some it’s never going to get hot. people have had a bad Even in Britain we get hot experience with it but I sometimes and we have urge them to try again frost. Then it’s native to because it offers so many gravel and sand beaches. I’ve advantages: the longest just planted it in the clay to flowerer (‘Citrina’) blooms see how it does but I have a for 10 or 11 months, the potful which has now stood shortest (‘Brockhill Blue’ two winters looking amazing and ‘Pygmaea’) for about winter through. I’ve seen five. The flowers are highly a flourishing plant in the scented and always flower ground which is even older. in the winter. In bad winters My opinion of Carolyn the flowers retreat but Bourne’s Whetman Pinks then recover. Different Fig. 8 Dianthus Passion has varied from meedful cultivars have very different (meaning meritorious – hardiness, the toughest meedful is such a good surviving below –20°C old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon (Brockhill Blue’, ‘Pygmaea’ word and I can spell it!) and the pale yellow ‘Lauren ©Bob Brown to absolutely fabulous. Stevenson’), then there’s a Ordinarily I can’t grow group hardy to about –12°C pinks. They hate clay soil (pale yellow ‘Citrina’, – I believe the constant variegated ‘Cotswold stretching and compression Cream’ and C. valentina as the soil peds shrink and subsp. glauca), and finally expand break the felt- C. valentina subsp.