At Bradley’s suggestion of putting a planter in our newly re-scaped bed to fill in the lonely corner until the trees grow in, I went on a mission for some new plants. One of the planters I had made a couple of years ago had kind of gone south quick with the stone crop taking over, so I transplanted it to the rock wall on the hill so it can do whatever it wants. (That has become my running joke – any perfectly viable plant that is not working for me in some other part of the yard gets booted to the hill. I just can’t throw out perfectly good free plants.
I had seen some dwarf Alberta Spruces at Home Depot that were being advertised as good planter plants, so I went home and researched them. From what I read, they do grow to about 10′ tall, bigger than I would want, but the yearly growth rate is only a couple of inches! And from what I understand they do well being transplanted, so if it grows too big for my planter, I can just stick it on the hill.
My ‘filler’ plants for the planter were a couple of decorative cabbages and a six-pack of purple pansies. (I am normally not cool with annuals since you have to buy/plant new ones every year, but I figured these were so few that I could handle it:). I don’t have a ‘spiller’ I guess, but I think I’ll survive. It looks SO much better than just the densely packed stone crop spiller I had in there before.
I have a project planned to snaze up these super-cheap, plain-jane terracotta planters, but I need them to be dry to try it and this insane GA rain won’t give it a rest! So here it is for now, not too shabby for $15 and about 30 minutes of my afternoon.
Leave a comment