By Hannah Stephenson
It’s almost time to dust off the patio furniture, spruce up those outdoor pots and get ahead with your hanging baskets to give you a riot of colour this summer.
The choice of styles and textures of baskets and linings can be overwhelming. There are some with solid sides, which are straightforward to plant up, or open mesh varieties which benefit from plantings at the sides as well as in the top.
If you plant your baskets when plants are smaller, it makes the job less fiddly as you can tease young plants through the sides of the basket linings more easily.
Traditional summer hanging basket displays include petunias, verbena, bacopa, diascia, lobelia, trailing fuchsia and geranium, but if you don’t want the effect to be too overpowering, select a few foliage plants such as red-leaved coleus or silvery festuca to act as foils.
Think about the overall effect when choosing your plants; some gardeners plant clashing colours of reds and oranges together will bring the wow factor to bright, sunny spots, while other prefer cool blue and white pairings to create a sense of calm in shadier areas.
Those who are short of time may have to go for easy-care solutions such as baskets of trailing pelargoniums, simply because they need less watering and generally less looking after than other thirsty specimens such as fuchsias.
But more ambitious gardeners with automatic irrigation systems and plenty of time can produce a wealth of innovative hanging baskets.
Stylish ornamental grasses and sedges can waft over the side of a wicker basket to look good in a contemporary setting.
Try the sedge Carex comans Frosted Curls, which has slender, silvery green leaves and is a good companion to more upright grasses such as Festuca glauca Elijah Blue, which has narrow blue-grey leaves. They need regular watering and some liquid feed every couple of weeks, but you only need to tidy them up occasionally by pulling out leaves that have gone brown.
Evergreen succulents such as echeverias can also provide an alternative display, forming a tight globe for an unusual effect, while luscious-leaved hostas can also happily fill a basket.
With any hanging basket it is important to deadhead regularly, water the compost daily in summer and feed as required. With a little luck, your patio baskets should be blooming long after you’ve put the barbecue away for the year.