Seibert & Rice

Ray Rogers is the author of "Coleus" and "Pots in the Garden" and co-author of "The Philadelphia Flower Show: Celebrating 175 Years." He’s won multiple blue ribbons at the Philadelphia Flower Show. (www.showplants.com).

What makes a plant suitable for growing in a container? A simple answer might be, "If it grows in a pot for at least one growing season, it's a container plant." Well, that might well be true, but I don't want just anything in my containers. I like playing with the Big Five design elements of container gardening, namely color, line, form, space, and texture (which I probably recite in my sleep). While every plant exhibits different expressions of the Big Five, some come up short in one or more areas, while others have them in spades.

Take, for example, Oriental poppies (Papaver orientale selections), which grow quite well in nursery containers. In bloom they offer more dazzling color and intricate texture than many plants can only dream of, but their glorious display lasts for a few weeks at most, and then the flowers are memories. A few weeks later their precisely sculpted seed pods ripen, and soon after that the fuzzy leaves begin to turn yellow. A total, nothing-remains summer dormancy that awaits all Oriental poppies is but a few weeks away.

Plenty of other familiar and beloved plants that can be grown in some sort of container come up short as well: bearded irises, daylilies, many daisy-type perennials, any number of shrubs (including hybrid tea roses), quite a few chrysanthemums . . . the list could go on.

But I won't go on with the plants with arguable shortcomings; let's consider plants that offer much more. I recently gave a presentation on container-planting design at the Ladew Topiary Gardens in Monkton, Maryland. In the workshop portion I asked several volunteers to evaluate some widely different flowering and foliage plants based on their color, line, form, space, and texture. One plant came out on top in every test: Cordyline 'Red Sensation', which is essentially a dark red version of the very familiar green "spike" often included in container plantings. This plant has it all, all season long (and it doesn’t produce one flower, by the way): rich red color, long-linear leaves, an explosive-looking form, a spacious appearance, and a fine to medium visual texture.

Of course I also asked the volunteers to choose a pot that best complemented the cordyline, and there’s where the unanimity of opinion came to a crashing halt. One chose a simple, yellow bowl, another picked an egg-shaped container with a subtly complex green glaze, and a third selected a terracotta 'box." The cordyline looked fine in all three containers, but many in the audience felt that the terracotta offered the most appealing color and form contrast to the cordyline. They echoed the opinion of countless style-minded gardeners from many places and times: a good-quality terracotta container should be considered along with a basic black dress, perfectly roasted chicken, or Ella Fitzgerald tune as being simple, timeless, and essential.

Back to the Spring 2009 Newsletter