HOW TO CONTAIN A GARDEN

By LADYBUG

Having seen homes with potted plants lining driveways or surrounding a patch of grass in many cities in India, I used to think of container gardens as an Indian thing. 

Then I read in Margaret MacMillan’s Women of the Raj that it was an Indian thing, but one we inherited from the British! The ladies of the Raj placed their precious plants, specially the ones that reminded them of home, in pots, because those tended to be plants that preferred cooler temperatures and shade. To prevent wilting under the Indian sun, pots were an ideal solution as plants could then be moved around. Some, I believe, even carried their favourite plants with them when they decamped to the hills in peak summer.

Container gardening in Canada seemed to be restricted to the obligatory planters at the entrance to a home, or the odd statement piece. Otherwise all plants were where they belonged, in soil, in the garden!

Thus it was fascinating to find a whole book devoted to container gardening, and whole gardens in which pots and containers held centre stage – “all a tumble, a success, a death, and at times a marvellous riot”.

Container gardening is then perhaps the answer to our confused seasons – plant too early in the garden in May and repent or, lucky you, move the pots indoors for a few days until the weather relents!

But Arthur Parkison’s space doesn’t lack bones, or a permanence.

He explains: Admittedly, most of my largest pots are still designated for annual glamour, which is the spring bulb display, replaced with flowering summer and autumn annuals, because the injection of these is exciting and creates drama. But the garden is no longer just an annual display in its entirety. Instead, other pots that swell around these firework-like pots contain more constant, perennial appearances to ensure there is continual form and interest.

He recommends envisaging a grouping of pots as a flower bed, with “only the largest or most ornate of pots holding court as grand single islands in the middle of a garden”.

There are tips on organic and wildlife-safe pest control.

Parkinson is not a fan of fake ivy glued to trellises or entire yards paved over with stone.

He’s got fun ideas to disguise or hide “the plague of necessity” – bins!

And he shares a story about the famed American gardener, Bunny Melon, describing her as quite ahead of her time, because she asked her gardeners to scatter the windfallen apples under the trees as they had found them before collecting them into neat little piles.

“We need to relax more as gardeners and let it all breathe: a little decay and appreciation of seedheads are now the order of the day!”

But for now, it’s time to hunt for interesting containers to lay out a feast for the birds and the bees. His pots bursting with crocus, daffodils and hyacinths are just plain drool-worthy. There is also an idea for “bulb lasagna” or a pot filled with layers of crocus, iris, fritillaria, hyacinth, muscari, and daffodils, overlayed with violas.