Container Gardening: Sarah Raven’s 7 Tips for Perfect Flower Pots
Perfecting the art of container gardening is no mean feat but Sarah Raven, the Sussex-based author, grower, cook, and lifestyle guru, has built a business on her skill in combining plants. At her idyllic home she somehow manages to fit in a busy schedule of study days—and they are packed with brilliantly useful (and totally attainable) ideas. We recently joined her for a day all about pots and containers.
Here are Sarah Raven’s top seven tips to create container gardens (and to purchase any of the plant combinations, visit Sarah Raven):
Photography by Jonathan Buckley.
1. Restrict Your Palette
There is no point going to the nursery or garden center to select a random rainbow of plants (unless you have a great knack for making haphazard choices come together). The first lesson in creating stunning pot displays, says Sarah, is to restrict your palette. She identifies key palettes: cool pastels (white, pale blues, soft pinks), deep jewel colors (magenta, tangerine, and dazzling lime) and warm shades (apricot, bronze, and deep plum).
Tip: Rather than being the great unifier, white can be a dangerous color to combine; with its starkness, white can kill some combinations dead. But white can work well with cool pastels, soft blues, and silver.
2. Cram Them In
Creating an abundant pot packed with flowers depends not only about the choice of plants, but also on density. Sarah suggests that in pots, you should halve the spacings that would normally apply in a border. This will give an abundance of plants and a spectacular display, but it also means that you need to maintain them well. Add a slow release feed to the pot and treat with a foliar feed such as liquid seaweed every couple of weeks. And, of course, in warm weather these pots will need to be watered every day, in the morning or early evening.
3. Focus on Form
The shape of plants is as important as their colors. Some of the most stunning pots owe much of their impact to their contrasting and complementary forms. Sarah defines this with a mantra:…
