Growing Art: Container Garden Design of the Week

Updated Geraniums

Plants: 3 William Langguth zonal geraniums, 3 medium pink zonal geraniums, 3 white (or light pink or white bi-color) zonal geraniums, 6 heliotrope (trailing variety)

I stole this idea from a gardening book. Something about it just grabbed me. Perhaps the color combination or just that it took what I considered a uninspiring plant and made it look fresh. This is a good design for a plant grouping. If you are using smaller pots (10-14 inches), I would put one color of geranium in each pot and group the pots fairly close together.

I used to use this in a 6 pot arrangement and it worked much better. Currently, I use this combination in 3 large pots that are spaced fairly far apart. I'm still trying to work the kinks out and get the look I had with the 6 pot grouping. This is last year's model. I used one of each geranium in each pot (thus breaking the rule of grouping colors together and remembering why this is a rule in the first place!) and two heliotrope. Obviously, the white took over. It was a seed geranium which is better suited to the garden than a container. This year I will use all zonals and try two of one and one of another in each pot to see if I can better emulate the 6 pot grouping I used to have.

This planting will take a lot of heat and is drought tolerant. I currently have this on the south side of my house, on the concrete, in front of stone siding in a black metal pot. It doesn't get much hotter than that! And you can see from the picture, it flourished. I also love the contrast the variegated foliage of the William Langguth adds to the container. Much more exciting that a regular red geranium! And geraniums of any other color than red always seems fresher to me.

Some varieties of heliotrope take more sun than others. Also, choose a variety that is trailing or semi-trailing. The upright varieties I've used not only didn't look right in the planting but they didn't seem to take the heat very well either. The heliotrope spilling down the sides of the container is a nice contrast to the compact nature of the geraniums and is what really makes this container work.