A SUMMER CONTAINER CRAM COURSE

           The talk Tim and I gave to the local DAR chapter went well, thanks for asking. Ever the wag, Tim prefaced our remarks with “I’ve never spoken to the Daughters of the American Revolution before. I must say you’ve all held up extremely well.”

           The ladies tittered appreciatively, which was very nice of them. Honestly, I can’t take Tim anywhere. You should have heard what he came out with yesterday during a discussion of the capacity for good and evil in all people (in the larger context of spirituality versus religiosity). “Take Hitler,” he said earnestly. “I’ve heard he was very good at barbecuing.”

           Talk about a conversation stopper.

          Anyway. I brought up the DAR thing because, as usual, our presentation included a plug for this blog and my email address for any questions listeners may have after we’ve packed up our miles of cables and gone home. A few days later, Miss Nadine wrote to ask what post contained the pictures of the deer-resistant containers we’d shown. I explained that I haven’t used those photos in the blog yet, and sent her copies. And then the light-bulb over my head flashed on—how about a post about drop-dead-gorgeous summer containers?

Delphinium plants from Christine

            Later that week, Tim and I drove out to our grower extraordinaire Miss Christine’s establishment, Another Place in Thyme (APIT). Ostensibly, we went to get delphiniums, an early-spring blue-flowering treat for our clients. This is how typical delphinium negotiations go: “How many do you want?” asks Christine. “How many did you grow?” I counter. “Thirty,” she replies. “I want 30,” I say. “But I wanted a couple for my yard,” she says. “How many?” I ask. “Three.” “Okay, then, I need 27.” “Okay, load ’em up,” she says.

             I love Christine.

Sempervivum assortment from Christine

Tim and I change out about 70 containers and design 12 in-ground plantings for summer color every year. Going out to Christine’s always feels like I’m Alice fallen down the rabbit hole to Wonderland—so many beautiful plants, and always a few new-to-me surprises. The ol’ brain starts churning double-time, juggling colors, fragrances, annual vs. perennial, deer-resistance, moisture needs, sun exposures, what plants I have to have for myself today. (Scored 15 four-inch Sempervivum—hens-and-chicks—representing seven or eight cultivars on the delphinium trip.) After an hour or so wandering the greenhouses and outdoor tables at APIT, I’m incapable of coherent conversation for several hours. Tim reports I ride home with a loopy grin on my face and bright, vacant eyes.

White vinca & raspberry supertunias

    The simple secret to killer containers is to pack in the plants. We jammed this 42” hayrack with 18 3” white vinca and 8 4” ‘Raspberry Blast' petunias in May. I snapped the picture in July.

Where's the pot?

            You can’t even see the 16” pot holding this lush planting of a one-gallon red fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum var. rubrum), 12 3” mixed-color vincas and a 4” fanflower (Scaevola aemula ‘Blue Wonder’) planted in May and photographed in July.

  Restraining my inclination toward horticultural experimentation, I stick with tried-and-true plant combinations for clients. Hanging in full sun, a set of stacked hayracks—36” long on top, 42” below—are stuffed with as many vinca and petunias as I could cram in, about three full flats to fill the pair. For a same-sized hayrack duo in full shade, I used an equal number of impatiens.

Stacked hayracks for sun

Stacked hayracks for shade

Heat-loving petunias

            Consider the conditions around your containers. These petunias can take all the reflected heat the bricks radiate without wilting or singeing. Many other plants—wishbone flower (Torenia fournieri), for example—can’t.  

            To make life easier on yourself, combine plants with similar watering needs. A full-sun, deer-resistant vignette of one 12” and two 10” pots, photographed at the time of planting, includes red pentas, fanflower, vinca, ‘Diamond Frost’ euphorbia, ‘Black Prince’ ornamental pepper, marigolds and various tender sedums, all of which share moderate-to-low moisture requirements. Succulents offer a veritable cornucopia of shapes, sizes and colors for low-to-no-water containers. Here's a pinky-grey Echeveria anchoring an assortment of sedums. (Be sure to look for my article on designing with succulents in the May issue of Carolina Gardener magazine, sold in fine garden centers, available soon.)

A heat-, drought & sun-tolerant combination

Combine pots to create vignettes

 

Be careful in your choice of

perennials to mix with annuals

       Mixing perennials with annuals can be tricky, as the former have more extensive root systems and will commandeer more below-the-surface space. Ornamental grasses, for example, can easily take over the lion’s share of a container’s water and available nutrients to the detriment of their neighbors. Still, some plants play well with others, as demonstrated by this perennial blue-flowered mealycup sage (Salvia farinacea ‘Evolution’) blending nicely in a 12” terracotta pot with the annuals ‘Alabama Sunset’ coleus and ‘Raspberry Blast’ petunia.

 

Mangers following the recipe

      Conventional gardening magazine, website, and television-show wisdom dictates the “thriller, filler, spiller” recipe for container plantings. Personally, I think it’s overdone. But here’s a subtle version, with pentas and ‘Sedona’ coleus as thrillers, wax begonias as filler, and fanflower as spiller. Moderation in all things works best in horticulture, as in life.

                Pushing the container envelope may be an attractive notion to those whose motto is “Think Big.” Here are some before-and-after photos of a pair of small raised beds cum really big containers Tim and I designed and built for one of our favorite clients to unclutter and unify her backyard.

Building bigger containers...

... and filling them

Plain & simple

 
                Sometimes, simplest is best. Here are three orphan petunias I tossed in a spare pot late last summer. They didn’t do much at the time, but stayed green through our mild winter: they started blooming last week. I’m looking forward to a long season of this single-species flowering powerhouse decorating the corner of our sidewalk. Nothing fancy, but an attention-grabber just the same.

 Big, small, or in-between, containers with punch have packed-in plants. You won’t be sorry you spent the money.

Thanks for dropping by.

                                                            Kathy

OH, DEER THE FIRST

Bambi & equally destructive friend

            That Bambi is so cute. What kind of monster doesn’t love Bambi?

            Answer: anyone whose landscaping becomes a collection of flower- and foliage-denuded sticks the morning after the Bambster and a herd of his closest friends mosey through.

            In all fairness, it’s not Bambi’s fault. As suburbia expands, humans insert themselves into deer territory without making any accommodation for the original residents. Left to their own devises… (Is it “devises” or “devices”? “Devises” fits the meaning better, but people say “devices.” I switch back and forth. Please advise.) Anyway. Left to cope with this environmental sea-change on their own (how’s that?)—since they aren’t the ones with the bulldozers, the poisons, the dogs and the guns—the deer sensibly adapt. Some move on, the rest move in. And why not? Landscapers seem maddeningly slow to recognize that instead of providing pleasant outdoor spaces for people to live and play, they are actually building bovine buffeterias. (No, deer don’t technically fall into the bovine class, but consider this: cows are ruminants too. I just couldn’t pass up the alliterative opportunity.)

Dwarf Indian hawthorn, a.k.a. deer candy

            When Tim and I started working in St. James Plantation in Southport, NC, 14 years ago, the preferred landscape contractors had a complement of about 20 different shrubs they used. All the damn time. (We got so we could reliably identify one company’s work solely by the presence of star anise—Illicium anisatum—a nondescript sort of shrub whose only advantages are that deer refuse to touch it and you can’t kill it with a backhoe.) About 30% of this meager palette topped the deer-depredation charts: Indian hawthorn, pittosporum, euonymus, aucuba, azalea and camellia. Occasionally, one of the more imaginative designers would toss in some daylilies and/or roses—for dessert, I assume. Other de rigueur deer tempters included hydrangea and loropetalum, whose tender new growth nocturnal grazers simply adore.   

'Happy Returns' daylily, a.k.a. deer candy

            Not that landscapes improved all that much once the deer-light dawned for many of our colleagues: hawthorn and pittosporum were out, aspidistra and ornamental grasses—neither of which contribute to stunning four-season foundation plantings—came in.

            But I digress. Tim and I signed up to speak to the local DAR chapter at their March meeting. I asked the program chair what topic she’d like us to natter on about: Revolutionary-era garden plants still in use today? A riff on colonial potagers? Herbs used as medicines by our forebears? “Any of those would be very nice,” she said. “But what we could really use is a list of deer-proof plants.”

              Oh. Okay. We can do that.

          Brainstorming for an hour one Saturday afternoon (putting off house-cleaning again), the intrepid Fitzes came up with dozens of candidates across the spectrum of annuals, bulbs, perennials, groundcovers, vines, shrubs, trees, herbs and ornamental grasses. Frankly, once we got rolling, we were amazed how many plants met our criteria.

          A caveat before continuing: Nothing—NO THING—is deer-proof. The gentle foragers will eat anything—ANY THING—when facing starvation. Resistance is the best we can hope for. A few winters ago, the ornamental cabbages and kales coloring our clients' containers got nibbled down to nubs, to Tim’s and my utter amazement and dismay. Then there were the full and shapely 25-gallon spiny-foliaged lusterleaf hollies (Ilex latifolia) we planted just before Christmas one year. We returned to the site after New Year’s to find them leafless as far up as our scrubby deer could reach, leaving only ridiculous-looking pom-poms at the tops. (We replaced them with wax myrtles, at appreciable cost to the business.)

            The point is, keep your expectations low and you’ll be fine.

 

            Deer-resistant flora share certain morphological characteristics.

1.     Plants whose sap resembles latex (viscous, white, sticky) reliably repel grazers. Examples include Confederate jasmine, any Euphorbia, alyssums, butterfly weed, many sedums and Sandankwa viburnum (V. suspensum).

Sticky-sapped Confederate jasmine

     Latex-y Euphorbia hybrids

'Ascot Rainbow' & 'Blackbird'

2.    Another resistance trait is strong scent (not necessarily fragrance, mind you). This category encompasses almost all the culinary herbs, marigolds, lantanas, sages, agastaches, alliums, catmints, wax myrtles, pines, cedars and the like. 

Fight 'em with smell--

       'Copper Canyon' marigolds...

...and pineapple & Mexican bush sages

 

3.   Thorns and spines act as deterrents, especially when they poke out of leaves, as they do in a pair of my favorite ornamental solanums, S. pyracanthum and S. naranjilla, a.k.a. bed-of-nails. Pyracantha, barberries, prickly pear—or indeed any cactus—agaves, dasylirions and rugosa roses discourage any outside interference, ruminant or human. (A note of sympathy: regular rose thorns pose no problems Bambi and pals: they just nip off the tasty blooms.)

Bed-of-nails' foliar defenses

             A forbidding line-up

of agave, prickly pear & dasylirion

 

4.    Fuzzy, raspy, fibrous and/or leathery leaves fall low down on the deer hit parade. Think evergreen oaks; many of the little-leaved hollies (Ilex crenata and I. vomitoria) as well as the super-spiny ones, like ‘Carissa’ and ‘Rotunda’; junipers and most other conifers; artemisias and lambs-ears; lantana; mature loropetalum; hollyhocks; leatherleaf and ‘Chindo’ viburnums (V. rhytidophyllum, V. awabuki ‘Chindo’); most succulents; yuccas; and any grass-like plant (although not necessarily the flowers thereof, as daylily lovers learn to their sorrow).

               'Blue Pacific' junipers

 do a number on Bambi's tender mouth

Lambs-ears don't please the palate either

 

5.  Deer have enough smarts to avoid poisonous plants: you should reciprocate by seeking them out—that is, if your pets and children are beyond the put-everything-in-their-mouths phase. Daffodils qualify, as do most ornamental solanums, lantanas, rhubarb foliage, artemisias and oleander. 

...as are oleanders

Daffodils are poisonous in all their parts...

Enough for today. I’ll be posting more (plus many more pictures) on the subject as the week rolls on and our date with the DAR draws nearer.

Thanks for dropping by.

                                                            Kathy