Container Gardening:

If you have designed your garden in such a way that you have areas of paving or gravel, you may want to liven these up with some well-planted containers. Equally, if your garden is very small, some strategically placed pots full of colourful flowers may be what you d.

Choosing Your Containers

* Pots are an obvious place to start. They e in all shapes and sizes, glazed, racotta, hand-paed, stone (real or fake), plas - you name it. If you end to leave your pots outside all win and you live in a cold climate, don't forget they must be frost resistant. There's no po buying hand-paed containers in Spain then expecting them to survive a win in Scotland!

* Troughs look good against a straight wall but you d to choose your planting carefully because I've found that many pla quickly bee pot bound in a trough. For example, in a trough 24inches (60 cms) long, I have just ONE verbena ch is doing very well but it's foliage reaches to each end and I originally thought that the trough would take at least three pla.

* Wooden containers. You can buy these or make them yourself if you have the skill and you can add a trellis for something to climb up the cre. You can use small split logs for a rustic effect or normal wooden planks for something a little more formal. Don't forget to leave drainage holes. The wood will last longer if you apply a wood preservative and line your container with plastic. Many wood preservers are coloured these days so your container could be blue or green or whatever you like. The easiest to construct is obviously square, but if you're a little more advurous, you could try octagonal or triangular. Divided containers are great for growing herbs.

*Hanging baskets, wall hanging half baskets or pots or hanging pouches are lovely for trailing pla and can create quite a show in summer.

* Basket-shaped or amphora-shaped pots look great but are quite hard to plant and maain.

*If you have a tal for construction, you could build your own pots or raised beds with bricks or decorative blocks.

Planting Your Containers

There are so many differ pla suitable for container gardening that I would d a plete book to name them all. Suffice to say that a small shrub will grow ok in a large pot but won't want to share will a stack of other things. Annuals are great for containers but will d to have the sp flowers removed to encourage further blooming. Herbs and alpines are good too but be careful of the sun/shade ded. Be careful also of herbs like m ch can take over a whole flower bed, never mind a pot, left to its own devices.

Unlike, traditional borders, container pla are planted very close together so you d to bear a number of things in mind.

* Buy proprietary post. Garden borders can, to an ext, obtain nutrie from the soil itself plus leaf mulch and other naturally-occurring organic mat. Containers cannot so buy the best post you can afford.

* Container pla d a whole lot more wa than those in beds. Don't think that just because it rained all day, much moisture will have penetrated the foliage - it probably won't. In the height of summer, hanging baskets and the like (unless they have a wa reservoir) will probably d waing twice a day. So you have a couple of choices; set up an irrigation system for your pots (optimum but pricey) or add a moisture retaining product to your post (you will still d to wa once a day). These are available at garden cres and take the form of a powder ch you hydrate o a gel or wa retaining balls ch look like polystyrene, either of ch you mix with the post.

* You will d to f container pla more often. You can choose a post ch has already had suffici nutrie added to last a season ch is a good start for annuals. You can also buy slow-release pellets ch you mix o the post in the dosage remended by the manufacturer. The alnative is to apply a liquid f once or twice every two weeks throughout the growing season.

* OK, so you have your container and you've mixed the correct amount of wa retion medium and f o your post as required, now for the planting.

* Try to design the planting on paper or in your minds eye before you start. Remember that trailing pla such as balcony geraniums or surfinia petunias d to be planted around the edge of the container.

* If you're using baskets, line them with moss and/or a plastic liner. Fill one third with post, plant the first "layer" of pla ch will poke out of the sides of the basket, add the second third and finish with the top "layer". If you're using tubs, don't forget the perspective - tall at the back or side against a wall or fence and smaller at the front.

* Groups of pots look good together, particularly if they're colour co-ordinated and the addition of a few well-placed pebbles or coloured orname pletes the effect.

All you d now to enjoy your container garden is a strategically placed table and chairs and a nice chilled glass of te wine!