If you want the benefits of a beautiful garden but you’re short on space, then don’t fret. You can still enjoy all the beauty of a garden without needing acres of lawn to fill.
Containers make a great option for people with balconies or patios and they can look just as gorgeous as a country garden. Jo McGarry, director and gardening expert at Caragh Nurseries, has shared her top care tips for growing a garden in pots when the ground is unusable. She said: “Gardening in containers follows the same principles as planting in the ground, but everything is compressed into a much smaller space.
“That limitation is what makes pots so useful, as they allow people to garden on balconies, patios and roofs where soil simply does not exist, while still gaining shade, cooling and visual interest from plants.”
Growing in containers is also much more versatile than planting straight into the soil. You can move plants around to catch the most seasonal light, and use them to make decorative borders wherever you like.
Jo said: “For beginners, containers reduce the scale of the task without reducing the learning. Looking after a handful of pots is easier to understand than managing an entire garden, and problems are quicker to spot because the plants rely entirely on what you give them.”
However, this means you need to carefully check your containers frequently.
Jo added: “Plants in pots are completely dependent on the gardener for water, food and placement. Unlike plants in the ground, their roots cannot search for moisture or escape poor conditions, so regular checking is needed, especially as dry compost and waterlogged compost can look very similar from above.”
This is even more important in extreme weather. Jo said: “In exposed pots, roots can overheat in summer or suffer in winter if conditions are wrong, even for plants labelled as hardy, which is why drainage, pot position and protection matter so much.”
Comments are closed.