Container Gardening - My First Urn
For my foray into container gardening, I started with the urn in the front yard that my mom gave me a couple of years ago. I had never planted anything in it before. It stood empty on its pedestal near our front entrance (except for the time we stuck an artificial Christmas tree in it).
At Lowes' garden center yesterday, the kids were going gaga over the flowers, and started bringing me pots (before I convinced them not to touch anything else). I just let them pick out a few, and then got a few filler plants.
Here's what we got:
(1) Angelonia "Angel Mist"
(1) Dianthus
(1) Snapdragon
(4) English Ivy
(1) Spike
Here is the first container garden offering:
Like everything we do, this project was not without its follies. First, the shape of the urn is not conducive to planting things around a central plant because the edges are too shallow. (Maybe this is why my mom wanted to get rid of this urn?) I stuck them in anyway and topped off the soil with leftover seed-starting mix. However, seed-starting mix is not very absorbant of water poured onto it (works best when you're misting with a spray bottle) so when I tried to water the newly planted annuals, the water rolled off the top and mud streaked the sides of the urn. So I had to slow down, a lot, with the watering.
I suspect plants can grow in even a shallow planter, but we'll see if these guys make it. I hope so, it would be discouraging to have my first container gardening attempt fall flat.
UPDATE: After consulting the bequeather of the urn, I now know I should have planted geraniums instead of those "fancy" flowers... will be repotting tonight and hopefully working the other flowers into the garden at the foot of the urn. If time allows and if we can dig them up, we're going to try to relocate the rhodies from the front of the porch where they seem to be dying from being too close to porch foundation, put them nearer the urn. We'll see... I will post a pic when it's done!
