Early last week, we had a freeze warning. I was glad I waited to pot the annuals I purchased the previous week; dragging flats of plants outside the garage during the day, and back inside at night is a whole lot easier than hauling planted pots and flower boxes inside and out.

By mid-week though, I decided to risk it – it’s near the end of May; surely the temperatures shouldn’t drop into the thirties this late, right? (I’m keeping my fingers crossed.) I use containers of all sorts around my yard – their versatility finds their way into almost all my gardens.

Most flowering shrubs and perennials provide their colorful display for only a few short weeks. Annuals provide non-stop color all season long.

Potted plants can brighten a shady area.

Or be used to provide interest in an empty spot in a garden.

Herbs, vegetables, annuals, perennials, shrubs, small trees – or a combination thereof, can be planted in any type of container as long as it provides adequate drainage. Special care needs to be taken to over-winter potted perennials, shrubs, and trees – but that’s a topic for another blog. It’s not even summer yet; who wants to think about preparing for winter now?

Whatever plants you choose for your containers, it’s important to get off to a good start – it begins with the soil. There are many types of potting mixes available. The advantages to using a soil-less mixture is they have everything included – vermiculite or perlite, moisture-retaining granules, and fertilizer. They are light weight; a plus for hanging plants and window boxes, or if you’re moving pots around the yard to take advantage of the sun. The disadvantages are they can be expensive, and they’re too light; they tend to turn into a cardboard-like consistency mid-way through the season. Topsoil or compost is too dense for container gardening. Heavy-feeding annuals and vegetables need a soil that will stand-up all season; perennials, shrubs and trees, for multiple seasons, but one that will also not compact so much that water can not drain from the container.

The solution? Bulk up the potting mix with compost, peat, manure, or topsoil. I use a half-and-half mixture of a good basic potting soil and what we call “barn-dirt” at the nursery – the pH balanced mixture of topsoil, bark mulch, and compost that is used to pot everything from trees to seedlings. Inquire at your local nursery if the soil mix they use is available for sale; it’ll be richer and stand up longer than anything you can buy in a bag. Though a good base, it’ll still be a bit heavy for annuals, and can also be a bit on the expensive side.

A wheelbarrow is the perfect vehicle to start your soil mixture. It can be carted to your containers, rather than hauling heavy, filled pots to their final resting place in your yard. Once I’ve got my barn-dirt and potting soil in the wheelbarrow, I’m still not quite ready to plant yet. Because nutrients leach and moisture evaporates more quickly from containers than from the ground, adding a good slow-release fertilizer and a moisture-retaining polymer ensures healthy plants that don’t wilt quickly in the blazing sun. The moisture-retaining polymer is wonderful stuff for those of us whose watering practices aren’t as consistent as they should be. These polymers are little crystals that swell with watering, and hold moisture in the soil. It’s important to follow the recommended rates of application according to pot size. Don’t use more of this product than recommended on the package – it can swell so much it can actually push your plants out of the soil. It might sound like a lot of work just to get started, but your plants will thankful you went to a little extra trouble.

But what if you have soil left from last year still in your containers? A common question I get at the nursery is, “Can I replant my pots using last year’s soil?” The answer is both yes and no. The old soil is basically considered “dead”; most of the nutrients have already leached from it. It can be used though on the bottom of a deep pot as filler – keep approximately ¼ of the old soil on the bottom, and add ¾ new soil to plant in. Annuals don’t have deep roots, so when using a large pot, I make use of the plastic containers the plants came in – overturned on the bottom of a pot, they save me having to fill the entire container with soil.

Once ¾ of the container is filled with soil, start placing your plants. Begin at the center and work your way out, filling in soil firmly around each plant as you go.

Plan your containers based on the amount of sunlight they will receive; mixing shade plants and sun-loving plants in the same pot will sentence one or the other to failure.

Keep your plants in portion to the container. Three or four little marigolds in a big pot look forlorn and lonely; the number and size of the plants are disproportionate to the pot. Don’t be afraid to pack them in – these two pots of begonias contain at least twenty to twenty-five plants each, (I lost count). Full now, they’ll be even more lush and beautiful as the season progresses.

With those simple things in mind, anything else goes. Experiment with wild color combinations, different textures, a mix of annuals and perennials, herbs and vegetables. Be creative. Have fun. And don’t forget to water!

My spring project this year has been the new hillside garden. Mostly shade to partial shade, I think it would be pretty planted with a few Eastern Canadian Hemlocks, one of our most graceful native evergreens, and lots of rhododendron, don’t you? But no, no, no – the only thing it’d be in a year or two is “pretty” dead. When planting a garden all site conditions need to be taken into account – the amount of sunlight, moisture, wind, and what soil types are present. Although hemlocks and rhodos grow in shade, they can not handle the conditions in this particular garden: the wind, heavy soils and sand, and eventual inconsistent watering.

Landscaping is like building a house – you start from the ground up, and hopefully in the case of a garden, the foundation is composed of good soil. If not, don’t fret – even in poor soils, a garden need not be doomed to failure. The 300-and-something yards of soil we had brought in last fall to bury an old, crumbling and poorly built retaining wall, came from a construction site, and is very typical of the soil in this area – there was very little top soil. Here, it’s said if you don’t have clay, you have sand. The new garden is comprised of both; there are areas of heavy clay, and other areas are sandy. I’ll be working with what I have – I’m adding no topsoil or additional soil amendments.

I’ll also be practicing elements of xeriscaping; once established, most of the garden will receive little-to-no supplemental watering except what nature provides. Mention “xeriscaping” and many people wave their hands in dismissal, having a vision of a harsh, barren landscape of desert-type plants and rocks. Some of the misconception comes from the word xeriscaping itself. The “x” is pronounced as a “z,” which leads people to think “zeroscaping,” a term that is sometimes used as a synonym for a xeriscape, but one that is very misleading. Other terms synonymous with xeriscape are water-conserving landscaping, drought-tolerant landscaping, and my favorite, Smart Scaping.

With careful selection, the plants I introduce to the adverse conditions of this garden will thrive and provide a lush landscape not only beautiful, but environmentally sound once they are established. There are those words in italics again – “once established.” Few plants, if any, can be stuck in the ground to fend for themselves until they develop a root system strong enough to pull them through periods of drought. It could take one to two years before I can stop providing consistent water to this area.

The trees that frame the garden are already established. A large, mature maple provides most of the shade. An elm, a serviceberry, smoketree, a white spruce, and two clumps of river birch serve as a backdrop. When planning a landscape, work from large to small; after the trees, comes the shrubs – the bones of the garden.

I mentioned in a previous post that in the latter part of March, I moved two Michigan holly (Ilex verticillata), and starts from a yellow-twig dogwood, and ‘Henry’s Garnet’ Virginia Sweetspire (Itea virginica ‘Henry’s Garnet’), into the garden. Next came three big ‘Gro Lo’ Fragrant Sumac (Rhus aromatica ‘Gro Lo’ ), one of my favorite shrubs, and an excellent erosion control. ‘Gro Lo’ grows only about two feet tall, but spreads approximately six feet wide. Interesting chartruse-colored flowers appear in spring, and the fall color is gorgeous shades of oranges and reds.

The sumac were potted and easy to plant. Other additions included five bareroot Blue Muffin viburnum (Viburnum dentatum ‘Christom’). Viburnum dentatum is Arrowood viburnum, a native plant that gets its name because the straight shoots were used for arrow shafts by the Native Americans. Blue Muffin, which tops out at about five feet, stays shorter than the species form, and has dark blue berries that attract birds in autumn.

Bareroot trees and shrubs are generally less expensive than potted, or balled and burlaped plants. Check with your local nursery in the fall to order bareroot plants for early spring; they must be planted before they break dormancy. The roots should not be allowed to dry out; planting as soon as you get them is essential. If you’re unable to plant immediately, heel them in and keep the roots moist until you can.

When you’re ready to plant, soak them in a tub of water for fifteen minutes.

Once in the ground, water throughly. Using a solution of root stimulant will help ensure the success of your new plantings.

Mulching new plantings helps retain moisture, and suppress weeds. Two to four inches of mulch is sufficient. Always avoid the urge to build what is commonly referred to as “mulch volcanoes.” A mulch volcano is that cone-shaped mound of mulch piled high up the trunk of trees and shrubs. Not only a waste of mulch and money, mulching in this fashion can be deadly. The excess mulch is an open invitation to burrowing mice, insects, and fungus, which may feed on the bark of the tree. The volcano shaped pile inhibits water from reaching the roots; roots may also grow up into the thick layers of mulch instead of down into the ground, resulting in a tree or shrub with a weak, shallow root system. When mulching around plantings always be sure to keep the mulch at least six inches from the base of the plant.

Power companies and municipalities are excellent sources of free mulch; spring and fall is usually the time they do their tree pruning to keep branches away from power lines. I’ve had seventeen yards of free Consumer Power chips delivered for this garden. (I hope that’s enough; I’m sooo tired of shoveling mulch!) At between approximately $25 and $30 a yard if I’d purchased mulch, I’ve saved over $400 to $500! There is a downside to getting mulch from power companies – it’s not uniform in color or size, (there are some fairly good sized chunks in the batches I received), it’s not strictly hardwood, which is the most desirable mulch product, and it could contain poison ivy. I don’t really care what it looks like – I’ve always viewed mulch more for its functional abilities, rather than for decorative purposes. In fact, I really don’t want to see it – I’d rather it be there, doing its job unseen beneath a lush cover of plants.

There is one part of the garden that has fairly decent soil – loose, but not sandy. It’s also the least windy area. Here is where I chose to plant five boxwood – how could I pass them up; they were free last fall – and a Pink Diamond hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata ‘Pink Diamond’). Hydrangea paniculata has white, cone-shaped flowers, and is hardier than the hydrangea macrophylla – the big mopheads with pink or blue flowers. Both the boxwood and hydrangea will require more consistent watering than the rest of the garden, but planted in the same area, less water will be wasted. Another element in xeriscaping is grouping plants with similar watering needs together, making watering more efficient.

After I got all these shrubs planted – twenty-one in all – the structure of the garden was beginning to take shape. Everything was still dormant though, and I was thankful for the relief from all that brown provided by the bright, cheery daffodils I planted in the snow last November.

Although hemlocks and rhododendrons would have been nice, I like the way the garden is shaping up. By choosing plants that will adapt to the garden’s condition, it’ll be a much more successful landscape than if I just planted what looked pretty. The success of any garden depends on knowing your site conditions – the types of soils, patterns of the sun, and amount of moisture in the area. Be realistic about how much work you are willing to put into the garden to maintain it. Taking these things into account, choose your plants accordingly, and experiment only with what you can afford to lose. And above all, learn to love what you can grow.

Next up: Perennials and groundcovers.

(Also, watch your July/August 2009 issue of GRIT for an article on xeriscaping! – Eds.)

The lilacs are beginning to open here – just in time for Mother’s Day. Lilacs always remind me of Mother’s Day – one in particular when I was about six years old and gave my Mom a simple, hand-picked bouquet. My friend and I decided flowers were the perfect Mother’s Day gift. Six-year-olds don’t pick up the phone and call a florist to order a bouquet; they pick their own. And we did … from every garden from one end of the street to the other. Daffodils, tulips, and other flowers I can’t recall, but I remember the lilacs – lots and lots of lilacs; I can almost smell their heady perfume even now.

I also recall Mom giving me a big hug when I presented this magnificent gift to her, finding a vase large enough to fit the huge the bouquet, then using the opportunity to teach me one of life’s important lessons: no matter how good the intentions, you do not take what is not yours, and do not borrow without asking first. With my small hand wrapped in hers, we visited every house where I had picked flowers. As I hid behind her, Mom explained to our neighbors that she’d received a wonderful gift courtesy of her daughter ... and of their gardens. She led by example; she apologized first for me picking their flowers without asking. Then it was my turn to peek from behind the folds of her dress where I was hiding, and say I was sorry.

I’ve repeated this story to my daughters when they were about the age I was way back then as we’ve walked down the street, thwarting their desire to pick a flower or two from a garden along the sidewalk. Flowers are sometimes so tempting. Instead they bring me flowers pulled from my garden ... sometimes, in Shannon’s case, with the roots still attached. This spring, tiny bouquets of sweetly-scented violets that last about as long as the flowers are small, line the windowsill. A bouquet of daffodils has been on the kitchen table since the flowers first started to open a few weeks ago; it’s freshened and replenished often by Shannon as one variety fades, and another opens.

I talked with Mom on the phone earlier this week. We laughed about a lot of things; my recounting of the Mother’s Day bouquet story was one of them. “Wow,” she said, “I’m amazed you remember that; you were so little at the time.” It was a lesson taught with love, and one that is still as vivid in my memory as is the scent of that armload of lilacs.

Mom turns eighty-one this year; as it has so many times in the past, this year her birthday falls on Mother’s Day. I always have told her it means she’s a doubly special Mom. She’s taught me so many things over the years; I wish she lived close enough for me to just pop in, give her a big hug, and tell her thanks. I’d bring bouquets of flowers snipped from my gardens. No lilacs; even where I live now, those belong to the neighbors.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

And Happy Mother’s Day to you, and all the other mothers out there.

Bottom photo: iStockphoto.com/Denise Torres