WHOEVER INVENTED the term "color spots" should be impaled on one of those pointy dracaenas planted dead-center in nearly every pot I've seen lately, or perhaps be left to contemplate the error of his ways surrounded by a sea of sticky petunias.
Why settle for the routine when pot plantings have the potential to bring elegance and artistry to the deck and garden?
If pots were politics, the current slogan would be, "It's the foliage, stupid." With the bright patterns of coleus, the luminous chartreuse of the felty-leaved licorice plant (Helichrysum petiolare `Limelight'), or the richly dark blades of bronze flax (Phormium), you won't miss the flowers.
Heat-loving vegetables and herbs thrive in pots. Give a tomato plant a pot on the patio, plant some ruffly lettuces in another and basil in a third, and you have texture, color and salad. Give eggplant (try the startlingly dark-leaved `Slim Jim') and corn a better chance to ripen by planting in pots, and if you don't get a crop you'll at least have spectacular foliage to enjoy all summer long.
I first started planting in pots when I owned a German shepherd who could behead a row of tulips with a wag of his tail and turn new annuals to mulch with a step of his huge, errant paw. To avoid pointless fury over his ruinous ways, I started thinking of the garden as divided into two distinct parts; permanent plantings in the ground, more delicate and seasonal plants in pots.
Now I have pots filled with climbing roses, small trees, shrubs, annuals, bulbs, perennials - anything I want to feature, protect or just look at more closely.
Containers are the necklace, the shoes, the earrings - accessories that make the whole garden ensemble individual and eye-catching. As with jewelry, when you step back and take a look at the overall effect, it is clear that the next step is to simplify.
One way to create artful pots is to limit yourself to one kind of plant per pot. Think cherry tomatoes spilling down the sides of a cobalt blue urn, or a tarnished metal basin filled with sunny nasturtiums. The common becomes extraordinary when singled out in a container of complimentary color and shape.
Lecturing recently in Seattle, renowned British garden writer Graham Rice suggested planting the mottled Impatiens `Mosaic Lilac' alone in a pot to showcase its delicate, intricate patterning. Next to it you could place a low bowl of glowing white impatiens, and a taller pot of a silver-foliaged artemisia for a complete composition.
Perennials, vines and shrubs best form the backbone plantings in pots as in the garden. On my back patio is a large terra cotta pot, placed alongside a pergola post, that for three years has held a clematis, small-leaved variegated ivy and a fluffy Heuchera `Chocolate Ruffles.' In spring, crocus and little yellow daffodils come up through the foliage; in July, three lilies add fragrance and flamboyance. In winter, the Heuchera and ivy, along with an edging of winter pansies, carry the show. In early spring, I scratch in a bit of Whitney Farms Organic Rose and Flower Food, add compost, and water with fish fertilizer several times during the summer. It goes all year.
Some plants are much easier to deal with when containerized. I love the groundcover Houttuynia cordata `Chameleon' for its flashy cream, green and watermelon-pink leaves, but not for its invasiveness. Its creeping rhizomes can be confined in a pot.
This summer, try planting annuals out in the beds (if you don't have a clumsy, big-footed animal about), and cut loose with creative container plantings.
Valerie Easton is a horticultural librarian and writes about plants and gardens for Pacific Northwest magazine. Her e-mail address is vjeaston@aol.com
In Bloom: By early May it is safe to plant out all kinds of annuals. Verbena, long-blooming and carefree, has tidy little flowers in many new, softer colors. Look for the striking bi-color `Peaches and Cream' or the sweetly scented, two-toned `Pink Parfait.'
