Planting a container is a lot like forming a carpool, dogwalking team, or a playgroup. To keep skirmishes to a minimum, you have to strike a balance between the introverts and extroverts, leaders and followers.
Take my porch containers, for example. For the most part I juggled the same core players in various combinations, whose chemistry elicited strikingly different performances. (Same potting soil, BTW, in case you were thinking of asking.)
Drought-tolerant verbena happily holds its own here with purple Calibrachoa (Million-bells) and yellow Osteopermum.
Calibrachoa, Verbena, and Osteopermum
However, it’s definitely losing the battle here with torenia, coleus and perennial geranium ‘Victor Reiter’. There are only two tiny verbena blossoms showing in this picture – bonus point if you can find the single coleus in the foreground (it’s not faring well either).
Coral torenia, mango verbena, variegated coleus
White alyssum is partying hearty in a hanging basket with red-flowered ivy geranium and black sweet potato vine (Ipomea batatas ‘Blackie’), sending delightful puffs of honey-vanilla scent my way as I leave the house in the morning.
I bought this geranium for the foliage alone - but these red beauties are an awesome surprise.
But its clone, a cell-pack sister, is about to be swamped any minute now by a cerise-toned “Wave” Petunia.
The Wave series of petunia are so popular because they are “self-cleaning,” saving gardeners the sticky job of removing the wilted blossoms. But whew! It’s vigor would give Gilad a run for his money, so you need to choose partners who hit the gym as hard as Gilad.
Red 'Wave" petunia
Streetwise Update: My transplanted vampire sunflowers survived with regular watering and an odd-looking trick I pulled. I put anything white I had handy – painters’ buckets and a bag of compost – in front of the sunflowers to shade their roots from the heat. It looked trashy, but – with one exception – it worked! Edward and Bella are fine, but Jacob’s stem broke. I wasn’t really surprised. Although I have not sampled the “Twilight” books or the movies, I knew Jacob was a goner just from the trailers – after all, he’s a werewolf, and it’s a vampire series.
Elsewhere around Green Lake, you may notice white trumpet-shaped flowers floating prettily on the tops of rhodies and hebes. Lovely on the banks of the lake, these are wild cousins to the tamed morning glory vine, and they multiply like crazy. In your garden, it’s best to yank on sight. You can wait until right after the blooms fade, if you want to enjoy them first.
