Box Gardens

Each year I spend a fair bit of time working for a particular client, landscaping, gardening and keeping the lawns in shape.  When the house was built, there was some sort of dispute with the builder:  the columns supporting the balcony were never finished to the owner's satisfaction.  The footings which should have been jackhammered into submission, were left rough and unfinished, poking out of the finished patio in a most unsightly manner.  So after much thought and discussion it was decided that wooden boxes would be erected around each post.  My job was to create beautiful container gardens to fill these boxes.  There are five of these containers, and I try to make each one unique, while uniting the entire group thematically.  Here are the results, two weeks after planting.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

Now as I look, #2 and #3 are almost identical, except for a purple millet, left of center in #2.  #4 and #5 are considerably larger than the other three, and #5 is the deepest of them all.  I use sweet potato vines generously, as they have worked well in the past for me.  This year for the first time I used a regular variegated English ivy, as Swedish Ivy seemed to be as scarce as hen's teeth this spring.  The petunias you see, are my own homegrown waves -- three varieties, Pink Morn in #1,2, & 3, Easy Wave Violet in #4, and Burgundy Chrome in #5.  My height features are red Dracena, purple millet, red dahlias, and red leafed canna lilies.  There are red salvia or red geranium for that immediate splash of colour and a few exotic coleus for leaf contrast.  I'll try to get a comparison shot later in the summer if they prosper as well as they did last year.

And that is about all I have to say for today.

Musings and meanderings from the Musical Gardener.