Like many of you, I planted my summer porch containers a few weeks ago. I have containers on the porch at our office and some at home as well. I love having flowers around because they bring such joy. Containers are a great way to start with growing and gardening if you are new to it.
I love getting to my local garden center to choose flowers for containers. I make a couple of passes around the garden center to look at what is available before I start picking plants out. Due to the pandemic, however, there were fewer and different choices this year. I admit I was a bit disappointed by the selection. Some of the flowers I usually buy were not available or were not available in the usual colors. How would I ever pull something together from these choices?
I started with larger focus plants. There were 3 geraniums available, all in pink, so I put them on the cart. I added a coleus for another container. They only had one. Ugh. Two red begonias were added to the focal plants. I started putting smaller plants on the cart to use as filler. Zinnias, petunias, and vinca. Orange? Yuck. Red? No way! White? Boring! Dark Purple? Maybe I could work with that. But how would I ever make these work together?
I brought them back to the office and got to work. I always take the top 8-10 inches of soil out of containers and replace it with fresh Digger's Delight Potting Soil or Digger's Professional Planting Mix. I started putting the flower colors together. Hot pink, orange, lavender, white, light pink, dark purple, and red. "These are going to be the worst containers I've ever done," I said, readying myself for an epic fail. I find that negative self talk always helps. Ha Ha.
I was so wrong! Actually, these might be the prettiest containers we've ever had. Colors I'm not crazy about are a beautiful contrast when blended with everything else. Orange is perfect with hot pink. Purple and red are amazing together, and white tones down the hotter colors. This last year has been a real learning experience for all of us. The pandemic was tough, but we have grown. It seems that in gardening and in life it's often the hard things, the things we think won't work out that end up bringing us the most joy. Gardening, like life, is full of the most wonderful surprises.
Dig It? It's Grow Time!