Creating a container garden is a lot easier than you might think, and it’s a great project to do with the kids. I recently inherited a set of three beautiful wooden buckets, and it took about 10 seconds of looking at them to decide they would be perfect on my back deck as a container garden arrangement.
Then it was off on a trip to my local garden center, where the real adventure began. As I knew these containers were going to be in full sun, that’s the area of the operation I went to – with my two kids in tow, me pushing the stroller and Haden (my 7-year-old) navigating the trolley (to him that’s the most fun ever!).
This fantastic garden center I go to conveniently groups and subgroups its stock. For example, in the perennials section, plants are divided into shade, sun and semi-sun subsections. How easy is that?! Knowing what kind of climate situation your plants are going to be in is the first step when selecting them.
The second step is creating a balance in the container. My buckets were only 18 inches wide. I decided three plants per bucket was the max they could hold, so I stuck with getting one 8-inch potted plant and two smaller ones for each. To create a balance in each of my containers, I chose something tall, something trailing and something showy (an annual/perennial flowering item). I was also after different textures and complementing color combinations. So this was the part that took the longest – selecting the plants that I felt were the most pleasing that would meet my balance needs and just looked good together. It was also the best part – kind of like a kid in a candy store. My kids and I simply enjoyed the time we spent out there, and Haden really got into helping me choose the plants for our project.
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