Add Cheer to the Garden with Winter Containers

It’s cold and gray outside, but you can still add some color and a splash of cheer to your garden by potting up some winter containers that will carry you through spring and beyond. Be creative and think outside the pot!  Anything that can hold water and has a drainage hole can make a great container. Pick something unusual – My husband removed the seat from an old chair and added a frame of screen in its place to hold annuals – it makes a fun statement.

Plant designers know that containers look professional and balanced when you include a “thriller,” “filler” and “spiller.”  A “thriller” plant is your base – a larger plant that is placed in the middle or back of the container. Evergreens, like boxwood, hollies (‘Sky Pencil’), rosemary, cypress, cedar, camellia, ivy topiaries, and arborvitae make great foundation, thriller plants. You will build your pot around the evergreen you select. 

The “filler” plants are those with color or other interest that fill in and encircle your tall evergreen.  Favorite winter annuals that work well as fillers include, pansies, violas, ornamental kale, snapdragons, dianthus, calendula, and ornamental chard. Pack them in tightly around your evergreen. Annuals only last a season, so you don’t need to worry about spacing them.  You want them massed to give a finished look to your pot.

Cascading plants are them added strategically to spill over the sides of your pot. They can be evergreen, like ivy or creeping jenny, or a blooming annual like sweet alyssum, with fragrant, small flowers in white, pink or purple, or trailing verbena.

To save money, keep your thriller, foundation evergreen in your container year-round and just change out the annuals seasonally.

Avoid using terracotta pots in the winter, since they can crack in a freeze. To care for winter containers, make sure you place them in a sunny spot and elevate the pots off the ground, to provide air circulation and keep the roots from freezing.  When cold is severe for an extended period, move your pots closer to the house for shelter and consider wrapping the pots in burlap or other insulation. Water your containers well before a freeze to help protect the roots, but water sparingly on other warmer winter days. 

Try some winter containers in the weeks ahead to lift your spirits before spring.