New oddly shaped planters are being hung on fences and suspended from trees these days. As gardeners go up, up, up with their flowers, it's almost as if they have turned the world upside down so now they are thinking inside the box, instead of out.
"As yards get smaller there's more interest in hanging gardens on fences or trellises. It's really popular now to hang picture frame gardens," said Tam Andersen, of Prairie Gardens and Greenhouses.
Check Internet gardening sites and you'll see all manner of square box-like shapes containing everything from salad greens to a mini desert oasis. The designs shown online take container gardening to new heights, with diagonal patterns and circles filled with greenery, flowers or cacti. The vertical planters may be both useful and decorative.
One little box, filled with lettuce, radish, tiny tomatoes and green onions may be the most visited garden in your yard, and the whole crisp lot will be suspended from your balcony just steps from the back door, like a painting on the wall.
"People are planting them in rows but also in diagonals or combinations of both," Andersen explained.
Some of these boxes are made from cheap wood from palettes. This wood is fine, provided it is clean and untreated. The palette box can be dressed up with paint or roughed down with sandpaper but either way, when filled with green, can be the focal part of your yard.
The depth of the box should be at least four to six inches and it needs to be filled with good soil, such as ProMix. Remember when watering, a small box will dry out very quickly.
"I've seen the boxes made from barn board and I've seen them made from recyclable root-fibre bags and of course, I've seen them made from plastic," said Michiel Verheul of High Q Greenhouses.
Verheul, who spoke at a recent St. Albert Botanic Park seminar about container gardening, showed off T-shirt-shaped bags made of root-fibre. The cloth-like bags were filled with soil and flowers.
"They say they are recyclable but I think they are really a one-time use. Use them for one year. I wouldn't trust them to last too much longer," he said, adding, "You could hang half a dozen of them on the fence and fill the kangaroo pouch on them with flowers or creeping Charlie. They are interesting because they have shape and texture," he said.
Even gardeners who hang their plants on the fence must be aware of their environment. Is it sunny or shady? Are you able to water the pot every day?
"You have to have a hole for drainage. So you have to be aware that pot will leak water and you have to decide if that's OK in the location you place it in," Verheul said.
Theme gardens
"Imagine an Asian-greens garden," Andersen said.
Andersen said for something unusual, try planting one part of the box with Tatsoy, otherwise known as bunching cabbage. A second square inside the box might be Japanese mustard spinach or Komatsuna and a third could be planted with Mache, with is a leafy plant with emerald green leaves.
"When you pick Mache, it's called corn salad because it is said to taste like fresh corn smells. You might stagger the vegetables in the box for a design or you could add parsley or trailing thyme for decoration or even rosemary," she said.
The veggies in a box idea might not always be decorative, she warned, but with care it could always be temptingly delicious.
"It may not always be at its most beautiful as you sheer off some of the greens to use but you could keep reseeding it so you always have new greens coming," Andersen said.
If your watering habits are haphazard, try a box filled with succulents, which are drought tolerant plants with differently coloured, fleshy leaves.
"Try succulents like echeveria, or hens and chicks or sedums. They have wonderful shades of blues and greens and they don't need watering very often," Andersen said.
The vertical gardener could also consider planting things that climb and most anything that will grow in the ground will also grow in a container, said Jim Hole, of the Enjoy Centre.
"Why not plant a mandevilla or sweet peas or lavatera or scarlet runner beans in a pot. All you need is a trellis for them to climb on and you have filled a vertical space," he said.
