Container Garden Inspiration and Recipes #4

More window box and container garden inspiration and recipes to get your creative juices flowing as you plan your garden this spring and summer.

This is the fifth post in our ongoing Container Garden series. If you’d like to go back for some of the other ideas and suggestions, you can start with the Container Gardening 101 post which gives suggestions for Thrillers, Fillers, and Spillers. Then follow it with Container Garden Recipes #1, Container Garden Recipes #2, and Container Garden Recipes #3.

With this post, you have twenty-three Container Garden Inspirations, Ideas, and Recipes within all five posts.

Six New Container Garden Inspiration or Recipes

This first Container Garden Idea hits close to home as it is my front porch from two Springs ago. Normally, before I plant my container gardens I would stroll all the garden centers in the area for inspiration and plants, working on the palate that I came up with.

However, if you remember we were smack in the midst of Covid, so strolling the aisles of garden centers was not an option. I ordered the Caladium online and filled our big planters with a variety of white and green caladium (with just a touch of pink). The creeping jenny you see peeking out actually overwintered from the previous year.

The smaller pot was just a hot pink geranium that I’ve been overwintering in our cold frame (in that chipped-up and moss-covered pot that I love) for years. The Strawberry Drop Coleus I was able to nab with a quick run to the garden center. Sometimes, simpler is better and this combination of colors and plants really stepped up that year.

p.s. I just pulled that same geranium in the chippy old pot out of the cold frame yesterday. I keep waiting for the rim to completely detach from the rest of the pot, it is so thin below that rim. It will be a sad day when that happens! 😨

In the Small Pot:

Colorblaze® Strawberry Drop Coleus

Boldly Hot Pink Geranium

Creeping Jenny

In the Large Pot:

Gingerland Caladium

Moonlight Caladium

White Christmas Caladium

Creeping Jenny

This second container garden, as well as the rest of the gardens in this post, is a window box I spied on our trip to Charleston, SC this past summer. The bright green of the coleus really offsets the darker green in the begonia and the ivy. And the frillier branches of the false cypress provide balance for all the rest of the bolder leaves in the garden.

And what you might not see in the first picture, but can from a side close-up, is that this pot also has what looks like purple nettle, lungwort, and snapdragon that is well past its prime, but is still providing some lovely foliage. This picture was taken the first week in July, so I imagine that these last plants were more ‘front and center’ in the spring and early summer.

False Cypress

Purple Dead Nettle

Bethlehem Lungwort

Snapdragon

Main Street River Walk Coleus

Begonia ‘Big Red Green Leaf’

I love the play of bright green and almost black in this next container garden inspiration. I’m not 100% sure the name of the coleus, but it looks to be either Kong Jr. Rose or Premium Sun Watermelon coleus. But its the combination of pink veining next to the purple next to the green in the leaves that is critical to this planter. The pink is echoed in pink vinca and the pink salvia, while the purple is mirrored in the purple fountain grass. The small leaves of the spilling deep green wire grass contrast nicely with the bigger leaves of the coleus.

Kong Jr. Rose Coleus or Premium Sun Watermelon

Purple Fountain Grass

Wire Vine

Pink Salvia

Pink Vinca

I have a thing for topiary and using one as the ‘thriller’ in a container garden is a sure win in my book. The rest of this lovely window garden is filled with many spillers; two different shades of purple in the petunia and supertunia, as well as the white Scaevola. Two pink Honey Cluster Penta are tucked in under the privet topiary and mirror the pink of the Mandevilla vine.

Privet Topiary

Light Purple Petunia

Supertunia Bordeaux

White Scaveola

Honey Cluster Penta

Pink Mandevilla

This window box container garden is all about Green and Red! Limelight green mini hydrangea, neon green sweet potato vine, and green ivy are the playground for red caladium, begonia and sunpatiens.

Illusion Emerald Lace Sweet Potato Vine

Little Lime Hydrangea

Red Alert Caladium

Red Sunpatiens

English Ivy

Begonia ‘Big Red Green Leaf’

Your last container garden inspiration comes in the form of another ‘red and green’ container garden, but with a bit of variation. This window box is more subdued, relying on a red Ti plant as the thriller and red sweet potato vine and the spiller. Green shamrock and lamb’s ear are tucked in the window box, along with white and red petunias. Pink Angelonia and white Gaura soften the whole arrangement a bit.

Red Sweet Potato Vine

Cordyline fruticosa (Burgundy)

Angelface^® Perfectly Pink Summer SnapdragonAngelonia hybrid

Red and White Petunia

Lamb’s ear

Shamrock

Gaura

Phew, that was a lot of plant names! I hope you found something that speaks to you in this collection, or in the other three collections. Which one is your favorite?

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