Create A Movable GardenMore...  

Ask me what the fastest growing trend in gardening is today and I would say 'perennial flowering plants'. [which is why I talk about them as often as I do in this column] The second fastest? Gardening in containers. Truth is you can live anywhere and enjoy all of the benefits of gardening if you choose to fill up containers of any description and plant them up.

I've seen some pretty bazaar garden containers including an old boot, a dog's dish and I will never forget the now famous John Candy skit where he planted up an old wreck of a convertible. It required a lot of soil but looked pretty good when all was said and done.

But much more popular than planting up the junk that you have no other use for is the use of pots, urns, baskets and 'planters'. Which brings me to the use of various materials in the creation of garden containers. Most boil down to the following; clay, plastic and wood. Each has it's and benefits. Before you go out to the garden centre and part with your cash for some of these, it will help if understand the pros and cons in each case.

Clay - my favourite. The terra-cotta look of clay is classy, classic [after all, it looks like it belongs in the garden, being an all natural product and all…] and it most plants perform better in it than any other popular type of material. The primary reason for this is the innate ability of clay to exchange fresh air for water. In other words, it breathes. Clay absorbs water, which reduces the possibility of over watering plants. The plant roots draw water from the pours of the clay pot as it needs it. As the water is either used by the plant or evaporates, fresh air moves into the pours of the clay until the day you apply water again. It is, in my opinion, a wonderful relationship that plant roots have with clay.

Plastic pots have the benefit of being inexpensive. And the truth is, if the plastic pot has sufficient drainage holes it can work quite well, at least temporarily, as a home for most common potted plants. They can dry out quickly if they are dark in colour [which most of them are] so keep your eyes open for regular watering [which is good advice generally, where container grown plants are concerned.]

Wood i