Container gardens allow gardeners to maximize limited space by growing more plants within an enclosure. When selecting varieties explicitly designed for containers, select vegetable varieties bred for that environment to maintain manageable height and avoid overcrowding.
Be sure to use containers with ample drainage holes and fill them with potting soil, including organic matter as necessary and limiting chemical use, to create healthy living soil.
Filler Plants
Fillers add an extra pop of colour and fullness to containers, giving them an inviting appearance. Filers may include fast-growing annuals or perennials with vibrant foliage colours and textures that blend beautifully into any design scheme. Impatiens is an excellent filler in shade areas; with proper care, it should last until frost. Heuchera can also work well as an easy filler choice, offering red, pink, burgundy and green foliage in shades similar to impatiens’ shades of red, pink, burgundy, green foliage that works well alongside impatiens’ leaves; pairing these fillers with coleus from ‘Rustic Orange’ coleus and ‘Compact Hot Coral’ sunpatiens gives an end-of-season planter with added colour from ‘Yellow Moon’ wishbone flowers’ delicate fragrance.
Filler plants provide food sources for pollinators and beneficial insects, making them the ideal addition for gardeners looking to attract wildlife. Fuchsias, borage, and echium are great examples of flowers which attract bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds throughout summer – to maximize these colourful fillers, choose a moisture-retentive potting mix in your pots that contains slow-release fertilizer for maximum bloom potential and regular watering to ensure soil remains damp but not soggy.
To achieve a more polished, professional appearance in your container gardens, try creating an appealing triangular arrangement using plants of various heights and sizes arranged triangularly in three areas of a triangular formation. This arrangement creates a balanced look without appearing overcrowded.
A galvanized bucket makes an ideal tropical garden, offering the perfect environment to grow heat-tolerant plants and vibrant flowers that adorn it. Geraniums, calibrachoas, and macaronies with bright hues of red, yellow, purple and white make an appealing statement in any container; other heat-tolerant options that work well include daylilies, Shasta daisies and sweet potato vines.
Spiller plants create an eye-catching vignette in mini flower gardens when combined with thriller and filler plants, such as thriller and filler blooms. Their cascading growth habit creates beautiful vegetation along the edge of your container; some good examples include heuchera, lobelia and sweet alyssum. Spiller plants work exceptionally well in a Thriller-Filler-Spiller layout, which features tall blooms in the back or centre, fillers in the middle, and spillers over its edges.
Spiller Plants
Spillers or fillers, also called trailing plants, soften the edge of container gardens by softening their edges. Annuals or perennials alike, these trailing plants add height by hanging down over their sides or spilling out and cascading into the pot below – sometimes adding flowers on their stems, which further unify a planting composition – often found near its front but may also be placed throughout its centre or all around depending on desired look and lighting conditions in which it’s used.
Thrillers create the focal point of any container display, while fillers add depth of colour or texture in the middle. Spillers add movement by falling over the sides and softening edges – together, these elements can help you craft stunning professional-style looks in your containers at home!
In this example, a dwarf Alberta spruce stands out as the centrepiece of this planted container design. Artichokes, variegated hostas, and the ‘Goldi’ creeping Jenny act as fillers to add depth to this composition, with French White roses adding colour that complements and contrasts nicely against the green foliage found elsewhere in this planting scheme.
When pairing different plants in one container, ensure they have similar light and watering needs. For instance, placing two plants that require distinct types of light, such as sun-lovers versus shade lovers, into the same pot could compete for nutrients; edible varieties should avoid mixing herbs that possess the same flavour profiles, like basil and mint (some chefs suggest growing basil alongside tomatoes results in them taking on their unique characteristics).
Before adding soil and plants to a container, always fill approximately one-third of it with lightweight fillers like broken ceramic pots, styrofoam packing materials or recycled plastic water bottles – these will prevent an imbalanced weight distribution as your plants expand, potentially tipping over.
Thriller Plants
When designing a container garden, the Thriller, Filler, and Spiller formula provides a practical and eye-catching way to achieve harmony and balance in its arrangement. A “thriller plant” is the centrepiece, featuring dramatic foliage colour, structure, or flowers; filler plants provide texture and contrast against it, while “spiller plants” surround and highlight it.
Thriller Plants are typically the tallest plants in a container garden and should be placed either at the centre or, depending on how you plan to view your pot (round pots viewed from all sides vs one side), near its front. They make great focal points that showcase bold foliage colours, structures, or blooms lasting throughout the season, such as ornamental grasses like Purple Fountain Grass, Cordyline or Canna Lilies or canna Lilies, as well as annual flowering plants like Salvia, Snapdragons and dahlias.
The Majesty Palm or Dipladenias can add exciting touches if you prefer a tropical style. Their glossy leaves and bright tropical blooms will provide year-long interest as they stand up well to heat and drought conditions.
Use vibrant foliage plants as thrillers; their long-term beauty may soften the intensity of vibrant flower colours. Plants with distinct textures and growth patterns work particularly well as thriller plants such as caladiums, cordyline (often known as Ti Plant), dwarf Juncus or creeping Jenny.
Filer Plants’ are midsize, mounding or rounded plants used to add textural contrast around your thriller plant and add visual appeal. Common examples include impatiens, begonias, lobelias and petunias as fillers. Yellow-hued fillers such as Golden Mop Cypresses, Strawberry Mop Coleus or Dracaena look particularly striking with yellow fillers; in contrast, cool-toned flowers such as lilies, snapdragons or alyssum are great additions if monochromatic combinations are desired – remember to include various heights, shapes and colours so there will always be something interesting for viewers to look at while selecting multiple heights, shapes or colours so there will always be something interesting on view when selecting filler plants so there will always be something new when creating planters!
Vertical Plants
Vertical gardens add an exciting dimension to flower beds and vegetable garden plots. Houseplants, annuals and perennials thrive when placed into containers suspended from vertical spaces like trellises or windows. Structures like arbours, gazebos, and pergolas may also offer additional vertical exterior growing space, as evidenced in this homeowner’s back garden, where she combined vertical plants and an arbour to create height and drama!
Vertical planters offer an attractive solution when space is at a premium, providing an alternative to traditional flower beds or garden plots. One example is this DIY strawberry tower, an inventive way of cultivating plants without too much room. Easy to make using inexpensive plastic pipe, it even features a timer so plants only get watered at times you choose!
Trellis or other support structures are adequate for growing tall plants in your garden, mainly vines or vegetables with long sprawling tendrils such as basil. Trellises, stakes, and cages can be constructed from recycled items such as fence posts, old ladders and wooden two-by-4s to create more space and facilitate growing different vegetables that typically thrive using traditional gardening methods. This technique frees up more room while allowing gardeners to experiment with growing more diverse vegetables that might otherwise struggle under traditional gardening conditions.
Vegetables grown on trellises or stakes are more accessible to harvest, produce more fruit, and are better equipped to withstand disease pressure from pests because they’re off the ground. Pair quick-growing crops like radishes and lettuce underneath vertically trained crops like pole beans or sweet corn to use these as living trellises to create an organic look.
Whether it’s multiple small pots or one large container, the key is the key to creating a stunning garden vignette by grouping plants by colour and style. This is particularly essential when adding contrast by mixing different sizes to give depth and interest to your display. Triangular displays are popular ways of showing different pots or planters together and work particularly well when growing fast-growing herbs like basil. Attach mason jars with herbs onto an old cutting board using hose clamps, and then hang them from a wall for effortless herb gardening!