Reader caution: The more you know about home improvement, the happier you were before.
Little did I know that five years ago when I began my flowerpot project, I would fuel a string of family jokes longer than a wisteria vine. The laughs begin every June when I bring home a flat of annuals from the nursery.
“Call the humane society,” the kids chime, “Mom’s planting again.”
“She sinks more money than a pirate ship,” my husband, Dan, mutters.
Har, har, har. OK, so I had some early floral failures, but I’ve improved. Problem is, every time I overcome one gardening issue, another sprouts. But failure and humiliation don’t deter me. And next year, I have even grander planter plans. But first, let my five-year killing spree spare the lives of your annuals.
Year 1: I plant flowers in five large outdoor containers. Three weeks later, the planters look like the business end of a broom, fried straw. Dan renames my planters The Jameson Botanical Cemetery.
Year 2: I hire a flowerpot expert to select and plant flowers for my five containers. I cling to her like English ivy to learn where I went wrong. Lesson 1: Pick the right plants for the exposure. If a plant says partial sun, it wants no direct sun. Period. My planters get two types of sun — full and brutal. Lesson 2: Water more. A lot more. In summer, flower pots need at least one good drink a day, sometimes two, which I totally get. With the kids home from school, I could use a couple of drinks myself.
Year 3: My flowerpot expert has run off with her sketchy boyfriend. I move to Plan B: Do what she did. Fortunately, I saved all the markers from the annuals she planted and have pictures of the planters. A blooming idiot could copy them. I plant proven sun survivors: marigold, vinca, geranium and petunia. I water so much Dan says he’s going to build an ark. The next week, half my crop dies in a hailstorm. The rest die from spider- mite infestation. Mites, like insurance companies, like to pick on previously traumatized prey.
Year 4: I turn to drugs. Despite what one of my purist plant friends says — that overfertilizing hooks plants on drugs — I figure, these plants aren’t driving anywhere. I pour Miracle Gro in the watering can with every watering. Flowers bloom like Fourth of July fireworks. I mix insecticide that targets mites in the potting soil. Success!
Year 5: I’m cocky enough to think I’ve mastered outdoor container gardening. I plant the pots, water and fertilize excessively, and watch my flowers thrive. Then, one afternoon, as I smugly kick back on my deck to enjoy my finally thriving flowers, I read an article about outdoor spaces, and suddenly need a defib machine. The article says that real flowerpot aficionados design their pots. They don’t just get the exposures right, and put tall plants in the back or center, short plants in the front and cascading plant at the rim. They coordinate foliage to complement furnishings.
What? I want to throw in the trowel. Now I can’t sit out and enjoy the flowers. I’m too busy critiquing their color combinations and coming up with designs for next year’s pots.
Syndicated columnist Marni Jameson is the author of “The House Always Wins.” You may contact her through .
Blooming potential
If summer flower survival is good enough for you, stop reading here before I ruin that. But, if you tend toward the obsessive — who, me? — here’s a crash course in advanced flower potting, courtesy of Steve Hill, a greenhouse manager at Arapahoe Acres Nursery in Littleton.
Combine colors on purpose. I never used to care what color my flowers were so long as they weren’t brown. However, experts plant purposeful — not random — color. When I first learned this, I wanted to crawl in a dark closet with 4 pounds of See’s candy. Two popular schemes: monochromatic, flowers of all one color (all white), or varied shades of one color (light and dark pinks); and complimentary, colors opposite each other on the color wheel (deep blue-violet pansies beside orange marigolds).
Match styles. The style of pot and its foliage should go together. Mexican pottery and Mexican heather; Italian pottery and Italian goat’s head; French urns with lavender and herbes de Provence.
Vary your greens. This isn’t just good dietary advice. Sophisticated gardeners think explosive color is for amateurs, and focus on the subtlety of blended greens — lime and deep purple potato vines beside a velvety gray dusty miller. Mix not only different colors of foliage, but also leaves with different shapes and textures.
Seek contrast. Put glossy leaved plants in matte pots, matte leaved plants in glossy pots.
Match flora and furnishings. The uberly compulsive match the print of their outdoor fabrics to their flowers. Say you have palm fronds on your cushions; put potted palms and pots of tropical flowers around. Because my pillows have a hydrangea print, and hydrangeas would croak on my sun-soaked deck, if I want to make the ranks of advanced container gardener next year — and show my family — I either need to buy new pillows featuring sun-tolerant florals, or import shade. Once again, too much knowledge spoils everything.
