Love your pots! 25 inspiring & practical ideas for container gardens (2024)

I love this contrast of upcycled tins, buckets and boxes on a neighbour’s doorstep. You can buy vintage crates here from Amazon

Our soil in Kent isn’t particularly welcoming to acers and other acid-loving plants. But here Emma Daniell gets to enjoy an acer by keeping it in a pot with ericaceous soil.

You can paint pots. This container was originally shiny metal. Gardening writer Francine Raymond painted it a soft blue-grey. Annie Sloan Chalk Paints go straight onto all surfaces. Rust-Oleum also do a chalky paint which will go on a wide range of hard surfaces, available here.

You can dig plants up from the garden and put them in pots. When Posy Gentles re-vamped her front garden, she dug up this 1970s rose and gave it to me. I’m keeping it in a pot for the summer – and will replant it in one of my beds in the autumn.

Roses in pots appear to be almost indestructible. The rose on the right was orphaned when some friends divorced. It isn’t something I’d have bought myself, so when it was dumped on our terrace, I didn’t take much notice of it. After it had flowered its socks off all last summer on virtually no attention, I decided to pot it up in a larger container this year. It seems to flower for months at a time. The label was lost in the divorce, so I can’t tell you what it is.

Pots work well in borders. Here this giant terracotta pot at Squire’s Garden Centre, Badshot Lea, is the focal point of a pretty planting of hydrageas.

Or take it one step further and choose coloured pots as part of colour-theming your borders. This also comes from Squires Garden Centre, Badshot Lea.

You can upcycle containers as planters. In the St Quintin’s Kitchen Garden, a wicker basket and an olive oil tin make useful pots. You can buy wicker baskets here, but don’t forget that they won’t last long outdoors.

Herbs grow well in container gardens – here Posy grows thyme in a mysterious object she bought at a car boot fair. On the right, you can see tarragon planted in an old sieve.

Many indoor plants do well outside, so re-pot them in a larger pot with some fertiliser. You may be pleasantly surprised at what pops up the following year. These were miniature table roses at a party we had last year – I’m so glad we didn’t throw them away.

Topiary in pots always looks smart. These cloud-pruned box at The Cookery Studio in Kent create definition and style. And I know from growing my own box in pots that they are easy to grow. See here for more about evergreens in pots for year-round interest.

This is my mother’s 1950s plant stand. I love it, but pots in the air dry out very quickly. Either water the plants every day or leave the pots dunked in a bowl of water for a few hours twice a week.

Sarah Langton-Lockton decided to grow courgettes in her pots rather than flowers. They look very handsome.

Think about the colour of the pot when you’re choosing your plant. Here Emma has combined a lilac-flowered hydrangea with a blue pot, which looks great. Dahlias also work very well in pots – see this post on how Claus Dalby displays his dahlias in pots to look like a border.

Or you can match the colour of the pot to the colour of the flowers as with Emma’s blue hydrangea. If your soil normally turns hydrangeas pink, then you can have blue hydrangeas by potting them in ericaceous potting compost.

Pull garden furniture and pots together with a colour theme: – Emma Daniell is famous for her love of turquoise (and pots)

There’s a huge trend towards planting alpines and sempervivums in shallow bowls – I particularly liked these plantings from alpine plant specialistsD’Arcy & Everest at this year’s RHS Hampton Court.

Contrast patterned and plain. These are just petunias from the market, but the way Rosie Turner has chosen one plain dark one and one bright stripy one is great.

Even a broken pot can still be glorious. Here florist and topiarist Charlotte Molesworth uses a piece of broken china/earthenware that she found buried as a pot.

More creative alternatives to standard pots – here Posy uses a jelly-mould picked up at a car boot fair for a polyanthus.

You can get resin pots now which look brilliantly like stone or metal – these ‘copper’ pots are by Capital Garden Products and I saw them at RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

You can use texture and shape rather than colour to be the ‘main story’. Here Kylie O’Brien mixes a grouing of terracotta pots with green plants very effectively.

I love these catering-size Greek feta cheese tins used as container gardens for anenomes at Jo-jo’s restaurant in Whitstable.

Three ways of watering pots. Fill a garden trug with water and dunk the pots in it for a few hours. Use a watering can or a hose. I like the Xhose for watering pots on the terrace because it doesn’t kink. The Xhose was sent to me for review, and I find it excellent for use in smaller areas. I don’t find that it expands as much into the main garden as it says it does, but it’s very easy to use.