Kim, I’m almost as mystified by its vigor as you! We do fertilize those fuchsias every couple of weeks with either blossom booster (we’re not too concerned about being fully organic with the container plants) or Neptune’s Harvest Fish fertilizer. And they are both fairly large stock plants that have been around for a while. Keeping them fairly shaded and really well watered helps them look lush too… -kris

I would like to have more singles, too. One of my favorite ideas is to fill my big black urn only 1/2 full of soil, and plant yellow creeping jenny inside of it. And maybe scatter a few glass orbs across the creeping jenny. So that you can only see that there is a plant inside when you are right up on it–from further away, it would look unplanted.

In reality, however, I’m a mixer at heart. The pot by my front door, beneath the shade of the porch, has frosty orange New Guinea impatiens, baby spider plants, and two colors of coleus. My bay laurels are underplanted with ‘Silver Falls’ dichondra. The year I did my entire herb garden in terracotta pots, I planted purple sweet alyssum all around the edges of each one in order to provide some color and interest.

And the urn, in spite of the simple vision outlined above, has everything but the kitchen sink planted inside: silver lotus vine, eucalyptis, coleus canina, ‘Golden Delicious’ pineapple sage, ‘Marcus’ salvia, red cordyline, silver plectranthus… it’s a train wreck of an urn! lol.

Kim, Your pots sound spectacular – maybe especially the “train wreck”! But I do also love the “ha-ha! tricked ya!” idea you have for that pot. You might need the Jenny to send out a tendril-y teaser to encourage people to investigate… -kris

Oh wait I do container garden. Anything I don’t use from the nursery right away sits in the pot. I heel them in a nice bed of composted horse bedding while they wait so they can put roots through the bottom holes and forage for nutrients and water themselves. I haven’t lost anything over the winters so maybe I am a successful container gardener after all

Containers (except maybe the ones that are heeled in!) are very high maintenance especially when it comes to keeping up with the watering. I’m always trying to devise ways we can leave all of the pots over the weekend without coming back in to them for water. Haven’t come up with the perfect solution yet… There’s always at least one dry guy… -kris

Layanee, I think you hit the nail on the head of why we love to garden! -kris