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| Photo Credit: ©2000 Dolezal Publishing/Doug Dealey |
| Take your imagination for a ride with this bicycle built for two…potted plants. (When well-prepared, your garden container options are practically limitless.) | What comes first in creating a container garden – the pots or the plants? That all depends on where you’re at in your container gardening quest. If you’re just starting out, getting to know the different types of garden containers available is a great start. Visit any nursery or garden center, salvage yard or garage sale, and you’ll get a sense of just how many containers and potential planters there are out there. By the most liberal definition, a “garden pot” is anything that’ll hold enough soil and provide adequate drainage to support the health and growth of a given plant. Under that directive, everything from a clay container to a truck tire is a fair candidate. If you’ve fallen in love with a particular plant before you know what to do with it, its mature size and care requirements will dictate the type of garden container that’ll best support it. Conversely, if you’ve found “the perfect container” first, its construction and capabilities will suggest the types of plants that’ll do well inside it. One important factor to keep in mind when picking containers for your garden is location. For example, if you’re gardening on a raised wood deck or rooftop terrace, you need to consider the total weight of each planted container – soil, pot, plants and water – to avoid overloading (and possibly damaging) the structure. Additionally, the very shape of each garden container can be suggestive of its planting use: Tapered containers are easier to lift and carry, while large and square vessels offer better support for plants with extensive root systems./p> Within these boundaries you’ve got a wide range of style options, which mostly comes down to a matter of personal taste. While it’s wise to reject a container that’s poorly suited to planting, don’t rule one out based on looks. The shape, size, material, texture, imperfections, degree of wear, placement – even the plants chosen for it – can transform what otherwise might be considered an eccentric pot into an intriguing and beautiful garden container. Consider the quality and durability of your potential planter, too. An old wood-framed footlocker can be an interesting selection, but its life as a garden container depends on how well you can protect it from decay by properly lining the inside and raising it off the ground. And an inexpensive plastic pot may seem like a great idea…if it can survive a winter cold snap and wind gusts.
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