OK, so let’s say you’re a total non-gardener with no interest in spending hours digging and planting, clipping and pruning. Got it.
But you would like a few simple pots of plants on your balcony, deck or patio this summer — some beautiful flowers, a few herbs and perhaps a few vegetables that you can pick or snip as you need them.
So, here’s the good news: Three very easy-peasy pots you could put together in less than 30 minutes — for all three — that will look terrific all summer.
To figure out which pots and plants to use for these three projects, I popped into my favourite Vancouver city garden centre, Hunters Garden Centre on Broadway, and got owner Miles Hunter to help me pick out key materials.
We started by thinking about a simple herb container that could either be placed as a hanging trough on a balcony railing or used as a window box or just placed as a straightforward rectangular planter on the ground.
We found a lightweight, 45-by-20 cm (18-by-8 inch) plastic, terracotta-coloured, trough-style planter with its own water-reservoir/catch basin on the bottom.
“People always tend to overfill these planters,” says Hunter. “They cram in too many plants and the container ends up being messy and overcrowded and just not functioning very well.”
Instead, we selected a simple arrangement of three excellent herbs: Delightfully fragrant Arp rosemary in the middle, curled parsley on one side and lemon thyme on the other. It took only a few minutes to complete the project.
For soil, we used Keefer’s Planter Box Mix (28 L for $7.99) and we opened a tub of Pro Garden Mix Hanging Basket 14-14-14 slow-release fertilizer for $26.99.
Now remember, there is enough in these two products — the soil and the fertilizer — to do much more than one pot.
A bag of Keefer’s soil will fill two, perhaps three pots. And there is enough fertilizer in the 14-14-14 Garden Pro Mix to sprinkle in dozens of pots, so there should be no need to buy more for a few years.
Next, we turned our attention to a summer flower pot and hit on the idea of a red-and-white combination to mark Canada’s 150th birthday on July 1.
You’ll find a lot of garden centres will be promoting the red-and-white Canada anniversary theme this year.
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