Last updated on March 20th, 2022
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If you have a garden but it’s not suitable for in-ground planting, you can take advantage of pots or containers and still enjoy a variety of plants all year round. If you want to add colour and texture to your garden no matter the season, consider these 10 plants for pots that will provide you with just that, all year round.
As we wanted to focus on plants that provide colour all year round, we have mainly chosen plants that are evergreen, produce stunning foliage or flowers and obviously grow well in pots. We start with a plant most gardeners will be familiar with, the Pieris ‘Forest Flame’ which is famous for its stunning red growth.
1. Pieris ‘Forest Flame’
This is an evergreen shrub that does well if it’s grown in rich, acidic soil that is well-drained. It thrives in full sun or partial shade and needs the soil prepared much the same way as you would prepare the soil for a Rhododendron. Effectively when you add compost or other material (to the soil) it needs to be properly mixed in before planting, rather than just placed as a liner in the hole.
These plants prefer protection against wind and they do well if they get dappled afternoon shade. It will span to approximately 1 metre or more in height and spread. Between the months of March and April, you can enjoy white flowers that are very showy and can be deadheaded immediately after flowering to encourage more clusters.
While all the flowers are stunning, this evergreen is best known for the colourful leaves it provides which are attractive and glossy in the form of panicles and offer different shades throughout every season, including winter. Contrasting against the mature green foliage emerges eye-catching new foliage that is red in colour, eventually fading as it matures.
This is a slow-growing, dense shrub that produces leaves with a flame red colour that eventually fade to a light, creamy pink and then eventually become dark green, summer. There’s so much to enjoy with the ‘Forest Flame’. It is ideal as an informal hedge, used in a shrub border or even as a specimen plant. Most importantly these shrubs thrive in pots but remember to use ericaceous compost, ideally a soil-based John Innes mixture.
2. Azalea japonica
This small shrub gives bushy growth combined with stunning flowers, the colours for which range from purples and whites to pinks and reds. Once fully established, the shrub will reach between 100cm and 200cm in height, however, there are many dwarf varieties available that are ideal for pots and containers.
It can be grown happily in a pot depending on the species. In fact, there are many species of Japanese Azalea that are ideally suited to fill a flowerbed or container. The soil in said pot or container should be acidic, which means ericaceous compost must be used and the position should allow for partial sun or full shade. They produce stunning flowers between April and May as long as they aren’t overexposed to sunlight and have proper drainage, so make sure you have plenty of crockery over the holes in the pot before planting.
When you plant the Japanese Azalea in a pot or a container you need to prepare a healthy plant soil mixture, and you also need to choose a pot that is wide enough to give the plant plenty of growing space but isn’t too large. The depth of your pot is not nearly as important, such that if it is too deep but wide enough, you can always save soil by filling in the lower half with rockery, we have even been known to use broken polystyrene. This will also help with the drainage.
3. Heuchera ‘Purple Palace’ – Coral Bells
When you are looking for a delightful plant for year-round colour but you don’t want to go with the traditional green, the Coral Bells is great because it brings to the table a deep purple colour for the foliage. During the summer months that deep purple will be offset by sprays of small white flowers too.
This is a wonderful perennial to plant in pots that you place along borders or to intermix with other green foliage plants so that it adds a lot of variety in different textures. It needs to be grown somewhere with partial or full sun and requires regular watering, especially if grown in containers.
It will grow in the form of a mound and works very effectively in many garden types. In fact, it is quite exquisite when grouped with plants of similar stature and will flower under some shade so it’s great to use it as an edging plant. This plant makes an excellent choice for containers, they are is easy to grow and don’t get too big. There are also lots of other interesting varieties.
4. Skimmia japonica ‘Rubella’
This is a handsome plant that really does steal the show. Densely branched, it will assume a natural dome shape. This shrub offers glossy green leaves that are aromatic and then throughout the spring they bring to your garden large clusters of small but very stunning flowers. These begin as reddish-pink buds and eventually open to a white, star-shaped flower (as pictured above) that is incredibly fragrant.
Not only will you enjoy stunning aesthetics all year round but you can sit back and breathe in the rich fragrances offered all year round as well. Not every small shrub can offer this. When growing in pots this is an ideal shrub to use around things like storage for your bins because of the fragrance it offers or as a small privacy hedge grown in containers around a seating area.
It requires full to partial shade so make sure you pick a spot in your garden that gives it the right amount of sun without too much. It also needs to be watered regularly. Rest assured it’s a very slow-growing plant and at its full maturity, it won’t get too large when grown in pots. Not only does it offer year-round interest and it’s very easy to care for but it will naturally attract butterflies to your garden, which is an added bonus.
5. Agapanthus
The Agapanthus produces flowers for a very long amount of time, bringing showy flowers of multiple shades from the middle of summer all the way through to the beginning of autumn. Suitable for containers, it also makes an excellent border plant, and it will thrive in the sun, offering something visually appealing all season long. The best part is there are many varieties to choose from and you can select smaller varieties that don’t grow more than 60cm maximum, whereas others can reach up to 1.5 metres.
The shorter varieties are perfect at the front of a border while taller varieties can be interspersed in the middle of a border. With any variety of Agapanthus, you can grow them in containers and they actually like being grown in pots because they prefer to be slightly rootbound too.
More important than the variety are the colours. You can choose between pale sapphire blue, rich inky blue, purple, white or even pink flowers. Pick the flower shade you think would work best in your garden and enjoy the trumpet shape, pendant blooms, or rounded flowerheads they have to offer.
Once you have planted them in your pots, they require regular watering to get established and they should be given some form of food in spring once they start to produce flowers. It’s worth noting that some varieties are deciduous so you want to look for evergreen varieties if you want all-year-round colour.
6. Callistemon citrinus – Bottlebrush
The Callistemon is a broadleaf evergreen shrub that does well in moist, well-drained soil and is one of the rare sun loving plants on this list. It needs full sun and in fact, will tolerate soil dryness from time to time. This is an evergreen, upright shrub that when left to its own devices will span up to 2 metres in height and 1m in spread. That being said, they grow well in pots and this also helps reduce their size. It’s a seasonal bloomer and when it does flower it gives you showy red flowers but rest assured that the remainder of the year you can enjoy its fragrant evergreen leaves.
It is not prone to serious insect issues or diseases so it’s incredibly easy to maintain and works very well as a container plant. The flowers offer bushy bright stamens and are grown in cylindrical spikes that look very similar to the bottle brushes you would use to clean out a bottle, hence the name. If you live in a frost-free area you can enjoy flowers intermittently throughout the year and they bring bees to your garden. If you have frost in your area do not worry as you can still enjoy the narrow, elliptical leaves that start off with a copper hue and eventually turn medium green. When they are brushed they offer a lemony citrus scent, which is what gives it the official name. Bottle brushes can be tender in very cold weather so some winter protection is recommended.
7. Lavatera ‘Barnsley Baby’ – Tree Mallow
If you want a terrific display for summer and autumn in particular, this mid-sized bush is what you should choose. At the beginning of summer, you will notice white flowers inside of which are deep red eyes. These flowers remain in effect throughout the summer and the autumn which sit nicely against the grey-green leaves. Optimal growing conditions for this include full sunlight and moist soil. Beyond that, they are fairly easy to grow and don’t require any amendments for soil type or soil pH levels. You can have normal, sand-filled, clay soil, neutral, alkaline or acidic soil and it will grow just fine.
Once fully established, the height will span between 90cm and 120cm. The spread will range between 75cm and 90cm so it’s ideal for pots and containers unlike most other varieties of Lavatera that grow much larger.
8. Dwarf Buddleia ‘Buzz’ – Butterfly Bush
This dwarf Buddleia requires full sun or partial shade and moist soil. On average it will reach a height of just one metre and a spread of just over one metre, which is much smaller than nearly all other types of Buddleias. It draws a great deal of attention, not just from those who planted it but from butterflies too, which is why many people refer to it as the Butterfly Bush.
It offers flowers all summer long until the first frosts. In fact, the colours are incredible, ranging from ivory to lavender, magenta, soft pink, velvet, hot raspberry, midnight and sky blue. In addition to the vibrant shades, the flowers themselves to grow up panicles offering a collection of small flowers all the way up each stem.
They are not susceptible to any serious pest issues nor are they very invasive. They will bring butterflies and other pollinators to your garden and no matter the colour of the flowers you can sit back and enjoy a subtle scent throughout the summer months. The Buddleia Buzz had been specially bred with container growing in mind. The only downside is that it doesn’t look much over winter, however, we loved it so much we had to include it.
9. Clematis ‘Pixie’
The plant requires full sun or partial shade, and is more of a climber than a shrub. It is a dwarf, evergreen clematis that thrives in neutral soil that is well-drained. It grows at an average speed and will eventually reach a height and spread of approximately 1 metre, which is relatively small in clematis terms, making it perfect for growing in pots. Come April and May you can enjoy masses of small, primrose yellow flowers. It thrives most effectively and larger containers that have some sort of support structure, like a trellis. If you have a sunny area of your patio this will be the perfect spot for this plant to grow.
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10. Euonymus fortunei ‘Emerald ‘n’ Gold’
The Euonymus ‘Emerald n Gold’ gets their name from the luminous foliage that takes on dark green centres tinged with gold and pink throughout the autumn and winter. This is a plant you will cultivate more for the foliage more than anything else. It does produce flowers at the beginning of summer, however, they are very small and few and far between. It has received awards for its glossy, elliptical leaves and once you plant it in your garden you will see why.
This low-growing evergreen shrub takes on a spreading shape. It will reach between 30cm and 60cm in height and between 90cm and 120cm in spread, so it is perfect for using to form a small hedge in troughs too. Wherever the stems touch the ground they will start to take root so growing it in pots or containers actually helps to prevent a more invasive spread and keeps it to that particular container.
If you place the container up against a wall and you add some sort of trellis to the container it will climb vigorously and can be well trained around the support structure you choose. Place the container somewhere the plant will receive full sun or full shade and make sure that you water accordingly.
Last update on 2024-11-22 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
