There are many benefits to using pots and containers in the garden. Container gardening offers a great deal of versatility, whether you’re planting short-term bedding displays or more permanent features such as small trees and topiary. In this video, Alan Titchmarsh shares five of his favourite plants for pots and containers and explains why you should consider growing them, too.
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Main thumbnail photo: Sarah Cuttle
Technically, you can grow anything in a container, but some plants just seem more suited to it than others. For me, the hosta is a glorious container plant. It will form an enormous fountain of leaves. You can choose the blue grey Hosta ‘Sieboldiana’, or ones that are edged with yellow.
And the great thing about growing hostas in pots is that if you put them on pot feet, you stand a better chance of them not being beaten to death by slugs and snails. They do like lots of water, make sure they never dry out. But once it’s established in that
Pot a hosta will stay there for three or four years and look better every year. It’s good to have one or two container plants that look good all year round and clipped box is one such. I grow small pyramids, small cones, balls of box, and they give the garden form and shape right
The way through the year. Now people worry quite rightly about box moth and box blight. Box moth you can actually squirt off with a sharp hosepipe just to make sure they fall on the ground, the blue tits absolutely love them. It can be a bit chancy, I know,
But if they’re in a pot, at least you can keep a close eye on them. And by gently clipping them around about sort of June-ish Derby day, they always say you should clip your box. Try and do it in dull weather, and then they don’t scorch immediately after clipping, but you will find
Then that a little bit of new growth comes on. And for the rest of the year you’ve got this wonderful shape, form and texture in your garden from clipped box. Many years ago, I planted a small Japanese maple in a kind of Chinese container. I haven’t got it anymore, but I did
Have it for about 25 years in that same pot. It became a sort of hefty bonsai. And whether Japanese maples are green leaved, purple leaved, cut leaved or planer, they make wonderfully statuesque container plants. Use a fairly dense compost, if you can use one that’s soil based,
It will give them weight and it will also make sure they get food for longer during the growing season. Try and stand the Japanese maple in the pot somewhere where it’s not exposed to either brilliant sunshine which can scorch the leaves or strong winds which can also burn them. So, shelter and dappled
Shade will suit them down to the ground, or should I say down to the pot. Rhododendrons are great plants for containers provided you remember that they have a relatively limited life. The larger growing ‘rhodies’, as we always call them, three years, maybe four, in a decent sized container because they grow so fast.
But the dwarf lower growing rhododendrons like the yukushimanum hybrids, they’ll be happy in a decent sized container for a good ten years, provided you top dress it every year with fresh compost. And the important thing about all rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias is that they hate chalk or lime.
You need to grow them in ericaceous, that’s lime free compost to make sure it’s acidic. So if you have a garden which is on chalk or limestone and you’re desperate to grow a rhododendron, grow it in a container of ericaceous compost, never let it completely
Dry out, and it’ll be happy for years. The African lily or agapanthus is in many of its varieties, quite tender. Too tender to be grown outdoors in most parts of the British Isles, but there are now lots and lots of relatively hardy varieties and they’re great in containers. The African lily is wonderfully
Statuesque, green strap like leaves, tall stems and then umbels of flower, great spokes on the top. Generally speaking of all shades of blue and of white. It’s the most beautiful plant for midsummer colour and a pot, or a pair of pots, placed either side of your front door are wonderfully welcoming
In July, when these blooms burst open. They can stay in a pot for several years, just make sure you give them plenty of liquid feed to fuel those glorious flowers.