Flowers as Container Plants
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Here, you’ll find discussions of the following subjects beneath each of the following titles:
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- Outdoor and Indoor Flowers and Foliage
- Decorating with Colorful Container Plants
Outdoor and Indoor Flowers and Foliage
Flowers in containers are popular choices to use both outdoors in your landscape, balcony, or terraces plantings and indoors as houseplants.
Growing annual and perennial flowers in pots, decorative containers, or planters is a great way to dress up small areas of your landscape or yard. They’re also fine additions to any indoors setting where floral displays or foliage plants are part of a home’s décor.
You probably already know where you’d like to plant flowers at your home.
Before you start digging, though, consider whether you’d rather grow your plants in containers instead of planting them directly in your garden’s soil.
There’s also a third option: Planting outdoors in convenient structural planters a bit more cozy than full-sized garden beds.
Pots and containers are the most convenient, flexible, and manageable choice. Containers allow you to move plants about, bringing them to center stage for a week or two, then setting them out of sight as flowers fade.
They brighten up shady areas for a week or two, then return to enjoy full sun elsewhere in your yard.
Containers also call attention to flowers that otherwise might go unnoticed. They bring the lovely blooms of fragrant flowers to eye and nose level.
Finally, container plantings give you the option of growing flowers without amending the soil or altering the landscape.
Without question, most every indoor plant grows in a pot or a container. In this section, you’ll learn how both outdoor container flowers and indoor floral displays add to your garden and home décor.
Deciding to grow some of your annuals or perennials in containers, and others in outdoor beds, yields the best of both worlds: banquets of blooms and a moveable feast of flowers.
Decorating with Colorful Container Plants
Flowering plants in containers are popular additions to many outdoor spaces in your garden and to rooms within most homes, condominiums, and apartments, including those where there’s little space to garden outdoors.
Regardless of whether you grow flowers in containers for outdoor or indoor display, flower color is the first thing we notice when we look at flowering plants. Start with your color selection at the top of mind when you plant your container flower garden or houseplants.
You should aim for a mix of hues that enhance one another, rather than clash. Any plant alone might be perfect for an indoor or outdoor location, but too many colors—and contrasting colors—compete for the spotlight and dazzle the eye.
Blended and coordinating colors give pleasing results every time. Your garden will be neither boring nor have an explosion-in-a-paint-factory result. Always plan to choose containers that will match your flower color choices or are neutral.
There are tried-and-true approaches that help you come up with eye-catching yet pleasing combinations when planting in containers.
The simplest way to design your garden is to use plants that bloom in various shades and tints of a single hue. Another possibility is to select two or three colors that harmonize—blue and gold, purple and light lavender, or ranges of pastels.
You might also choose to focus instead on color temperature—warmth or coolness—and plant a warm combination of red, red-orange, and orange to enliven the solid-green wall of shrubbery at the back of a yard. A cool plant flower palette of violet, blue-violet, and blue next by a deck or patio lends serenity to those areas.
Once you begin you’ll quickly see which approach works best in your home and yard. Start with containers of annual flower plants, since they grow quickly and give multiple chances during the season