Deanneart

That patio is gorgeous! a beautiful outdoor space!

Glad to hear all is well there Michelle.

Lovely garden spaces. Great job on on the flow of the borders and hardscaping.

Very nice! love the use of conifers in the borders

Looking great! get well soon

Very nice!

These are really great! Nice combinations

Looking great Michelle! Love, love, love your little shed. The patio is a wonderful outdoor space. I'm sure lots of great times are had there.

So pretty! and what a lovely 'Pick me Up' to see this on a cloudy dreary day. Thanks for sharing Michael

Very beautiful

Tower Hill is at the top of my list of favorite gardens to visit because of their inspired collection of container plantings. Fabulous!

Perfect! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

That is just too sad! Heartbreaking. So many of us here in the Northeast are dealing with this kind of damage to our mature trees and I think oaks were hit particlarly hard. Our hundred foot tall and at least as old oak that is a focal tree for the back gardens lost most of the limbs off the top...

Those are all great! what a clever idea and so well executed. Do you know if the watering cans are metal or plastic? I'd have to be totally predictible and paint flowers on it! LOL In fact I might just do that as this type of painting is actually my 'day job'. LOL

Gorgeous plant! no idea as to the ID, do you have a closeup of the flowers?

Lovely finish to the season... I love the juxtaposition of ageing foliage and blazing color this time of the year.

Lovely gardens! I especially love the Kalanchoe thrysiflora in the cement basket, fantastic!

What a lovely, flower abundant garden! wonderful

Love this! Beautiful setting for these great statues.

One plant! incredible!!!!!

Very creative wall treatment.... love it

What a beautiful combination of formal, clipped hedges with lush abundance of the late season flowering plants. love it!

WEll thanks for dodging the traffic to get these beautiful shots. Wonderful! Wish my city would put a few of these planters in. very nice!

Would love to see this garden sometime. Lucky you!

Really love this idea, clever!

LOL

Love this! I agree that front yard seating is welcoming and not seen that often. We are working on creating a shrub border across the front at the street and am hoping eventually to tuck in a bistro set somewhere in the front as well.

I absolutely love garden surprises like this!

Wow! how gorgeous! they seamlessly tie into the landscape. Love this.

Great pics of a great garden, I love Stonecrop... Like Cottagegartdenfee I'll be spending my day assessing the damage to the gardens and trying to put things back in order. The best thing about gardens is that they do grow back! Thank goodness we aren't dealing with flooding and downed trees. Just hoping to be able to straighten up my precariously leaning Cotinus 'Golden Spirit' but, compared with so many are dealing with this morning we are very lucky.

Great vignette

Fabulous!

Fabulous combination! How I wish I could grow Phormium to look like that! gorgeous

Oh so creative! love those chartreuse chairs! and that water feature is wonderful.

Just love this folly! so well done

I absolutely love Chanticleer and the reflecting pool there is especially beautiful. I'd love to find a spot for a still reflecting pool somewhere here...

Wonderful and different plants. Sorry but I can't help with the ID on the succulent. What a beauty!

Great container and planting!

Wowza, she's only 5 and framed these pics with a cell phone camera? Amazing ability to see a shot. She's seriously got a good eye Michelle. Great pics my friend!

What a lovely garden!

How fabulous! wish I had room for a wonderful structure here. Also wish I had the time to keep it that organized.

YIKES!

LOL love this shot Michelle! My hoses are always out and about except during a garden tour, especially during weather like we've been having this summer.

Hmmmm..... Would like to more variation in the sizes of the globes and that small one should NOT be featured in that urn. Needs some art and perhaps a zing of color?

I'd take that beat up old urn for my garden
in a heartbeat!

Hi everyone, so nice to see all the comments here! Many thanks!

Petuniababi, when I first plant a container arrangement I like to ‘stuff’ the pot with plants. I keep things pruned as they grow and some I let ‘fade away’ or remove, if they aren’t vigorous enough to keep up with their companions. When the container is first put together I give it a good watering then don’t water again until the soil is going from damp to dry. It’s easy to overwater early on. I also throw in a handful of Osmocote when I first put a pot together. After the plants become established and you see nice growth coming on I normally water once a day in sunny weather. After a few weeks I start feeding a liquid feed once a week following the recommended application for whatever product I’m using.

Hi there Mindy! Nice to hear from you and yes, I go to The Farmer’s Daughter a couple times a season. I also love Walker Farm in East Dummerston VT. And Lake Street Gardens in Salem NH. Hoping we get to meet this summer.

Cwinnie, in that first photo that corkscrew-looking plant is actually a piece of curly willow that I spray painted red and added as an accent to that container.

Deerfeeder, I always cultivate one of the neighborhood children and pay them to water my pots while I’m away. If you don’t have anyone who can help you with that, moving the containers to a shadier location, placing pots in a saucer of water and pruning would all help get them through.

Hi ncgardener good questions!
1. All the plants in these photos are annuals or temperennials for me in NH.
2. I normally start all my container combinations in early May through the beginning of June.
3. Container plantings are naturally stressed because they are crowded into the pots. To keep them looking good all season you need to pay close attention to their watering needs. Some of these need water twice a day by end of August. I usually feed them with a liquid plant food once a week and I groom/deadhead them once a week (prune out any overaggressive growth to keep the design balanced)
4. Favorites?! LOL I love them all… It’s very hard to pick a favorite, I’ve got a great collection of acalyphas, fuchsias and abutilons and there is nothing better than coleus. The newer cultivars are fabulous. Great colors and many can be grown in full sun. I really love designing containers with dark violet and oranges.

What a great surprise to see the GPOD this morning! Yes indeed, I do LOVE color. Will be happy to answer any questions about my container gardening.

Wonderful, I really love stonework in gardens! I've never been to this garden and now must put it on my list of places I need to see.

Wonderful! Love this display at Stonecrop. We were there a couple years ago and it's a marvelous place. Thanks for sharing

Brillilant composition. Really love the greens of the datura harmonizing with the green colors of the building and the contrast between the bold, large datura foliage and the airy, delicate foliage of the verbena. Beautiful!

Beautiful combination of texture, height and color! Lovely border!

As cute as it gets! love it

Great combos, terrific plants

Don't I just love this! Beautiful. I'd just love to have one of those containers. When we were at Longwood a few years ago they had this allee planted with caladium and it was absolutely scrumptious

LOL, have another coffee! you have a great imagination

Great vignette!

These are truly fantastic plants for difficult shade areas. Lovely foliage that always looks fresh regardless of what the weather throws at us. Beautiful photos of a great plant Michelle.

This is beautiful and educational as well, Love it! Looks like a river delta. Love how the patterns in nature echo each other

Beautiful! LOngwood is one of my very favorite gardens anywhere.

I love creative solutions to problems in the garden. This is well done

Nice combos!

Very nice!

Very clever, love it

Great combination Michelle! Love that Alabama Sunset. One of the prettiest coleus around. Is that a plectranthus in the upper right?

Really lovely, I so enjoy formal gardens

Beautiful!

I used to have that one but the voles ate it... I believe the name is because of the upright leaves. Love it in that container.

Love those little hostas. My favorite is 'Blue Mouse Ears'. I've got one spot in the back gardens where I'm creating a little ground cover with it.

Wowza! what a fabulous specimen. Beautiful plant and beautifully grown and displayed.

Fantastic! I love using traditional house plants in the garden. Calatheas, begonias dracenas etc. look great tucked into shady areas.

Nothing quite says spring like the graceful, abundant blossos of wisteria, love this! Still waiting for my standard, white wisteria to show any signs of breaking dormancy...

Lovely combination. really like the bold Cordyline spearing up through the delicate flowers

What a WONDERFUL photograph of a most beautiful sight! Great image Michelle
Deanne

Living sculpture! beautiful!

Highly beautiful images of one of my favorite gardens!

Beautiful! a wonderfully designed garden beautifully cared for. What could be better. Wish I could come for a tour

Very, very nice!

Wow, this is REALLY nice. Love the airy textures juxtaposed with the bold canna leaves. Brilliant combo!

Lovely!

Thanks for the comments everyone!

LakeLivingMary, I trained that Abutilon to a standard form over the last eight years. You can get a baby plant from Avant Gardens and other mail order nurseries. I’ve seen them for sale here in local nurseries as young standards from time to time as well. http://www.avantgardensne.com/catalog/product.cgi/1/20/2722/P1/default/N/0

Mindy, yes I do a LOT of pruning on all my abutilons. When I bring them in during October I prune back the top growth by 2/3rds and strip off all the leaves. I let them sit on shelves in the garage until December when the temperatures in there will start to drop below 40 or so. Then I bring them indoors to the lights in the basement and resume watering. The lights are on 14 hours a day and I use full spectrum bulbs. When the plants begin growing again I prune back every lead to the first full leaf. I continue to do this throughout the winter. The really gigantic Abutilons like ‘Souvenir de Bonne’ and ‘Voodoo’ I prune back to two feet or so and do everything else the same. Feeding is dependent on the time of the year. I do not feed until there is six inches or more of new growth on the plants under the lights. I use a variety of liquid fertilizers such as AlgoFlash, Maxsea, Peters, MiracleGro etc. at half strength. In winter they only get a feeding if the leaves start yellowing and looking like they need it. In summer they get a liquid feed at half strength when planted then two weeks later. After they are established and growing well I do a once a week liquid feed at half strength and adjust that up or down depending on how the plants are doing. I rotate the brand of food throughout the season.

Cheers
Deanne

Thanks again all! So nice to hear from you Gardengirl96, Sheila and Mindy, and yes I've been working on how and what to overwinter for a long time. This year my experiment was Cuphea micropetala and it is doing great in the dormant room. Can't wait to see what it does for me next summer.

Sheila, we bought those stainless roll around shelving units from Sam's club and my husband attached four foot fluorescent lights to the bottom of the shelves. They all run on timers and they are next to my utility sink in the basement so it makes for easier care.

Mindy, I've actually overwintered Pennisetum rubrum in the past but I decided it needed too much light and space and it's inexpensive and easy enough to find in the spring so I don't keep that any more but, I've got some of those great P. 'Purple Prince' under lights this winter as I don't ever want to be without it.

I've toyed with the idea of doing a container workshop in the past but I'm usually too busy with my spring schedule of getting the gardens in shape and planting my own containers not to mention keeping my business going to have the time to do any spring workshops.

And yes Mindy,we have some of the same friends in CT and I'd love to get together this year!
Cheers
Deanne

Thanks ncgardener and mindy!

Mindy, we are also Zone 5. All the glazed pots get emptied, cleaned out and then stacked upside down on a wooden pallet my husband made for me in my compost/utility area. I cover the whole stack with a couple of tarps before the snow flies.

I travel for plants and also mail order things. My favorite nurseries are The Farmer’s Daughter in South Kingston, RI, a really outstanding place, Walker Farm, East Dumerston, VT, Lake Street Gardens, Salem, NH and The Mixed Border, Hollis, NH. And yes, indeed, I overwinter quite a few things. I take tip cuttings in the fall for some non-woody plants like Coleus, Strobilanthes, Alternanthera, etc. For woody plants like Fuchsia, large Cuphea and Phygelius I bring them in and store them dormant. The dormant room in the basement stays at 48 to 52 degrees and the plants in there only need a splash of water once a month or so to keep them from completely drying out. Some plants like my large specimens of Acalypha, Abutilon, Euphorbia cotinifolia and the Fuchsia standards I keep in the green under lights. I have 40’ of lights that house my collection. The really large Cordyline Australis, Dracenas, Sanchezia speciosa and cane type Begonias are in my south and west windows. I’ve also successfully wintered over my Salvia ‘Black and Blue’ dormant the last couple years.

I don’t create mono culture areas within an arrangement. I’ve found that the colocasia/alocasia/papyrus etc. do fine with my watering regimen. Once the containers are established they do get watered every morning until the water runs out the drain holes. Usually by August I have to start giving a second watering in late afternoon. The only thing I’ve done to segregate plants in a container is for Pennisetum grass, I’ll put a barrier around the grass to keep the roots from infiltrating the mature Abutilons and Acalyphas that I bring in for the winter.
Cheers
Deanne

Many thanks for the kind comments everyone!

Birdwhisperer, LOL I would be the "army" keeping all the containers watered and I normally have 300 or more here in the summers. It takes about an hour a day to do the watering. I am able to grow so many plants in a container that size by keeping them on a good feeding and watering schedule. I also groom the plants regularly and prune things to keep everything happy.

This is really lovely and a great idea. Looks like lace.

Wonderful! I think I need to find this great plant.

What a fun juxtaposition, cornstalks with the Morning Glories. Love it! Its been a really warm fall here in the Northeast. I still have a Hyacinth Bean Vine in full bloom on my front steps in southern NH

Absolutely SUPERB

This is the best use I've seen of mirrors in the garden. It's so well sited and the plants growing around it make the illusion perfect.

Love this plant and in fact have one waiting for the fall plant shuffle to get it in the ground.

It's a tropical oasis! love this!

Makes a pretty frame for the plantings in this garden. Nice! I've got a patch of it growing in bark mulch that escaped from a container garden several years ago.

Love this!

Great combination. I love that Euphorbia used as a bedding plant.

Very creative and beautifully composed container! love it

Very interesting sculptures and so perfectly sited. Nice!

That's pretty impressive. Is that Hedera helix?

Great use of this terrific trailer!

Nice!

Great idea! Love this

Beautiful borders, love the stone work

This is really superb

Really clever idea! love this

Wow! Absolutely stunning!

Thanks Deziner and Containermad.... We are in Zone 5 - Southern NH. A plant listing would be next to impossible here as it would take a book! LOL