This is the time of year to plant up pots for the patio and by choosing a mixture of perennials and evergreens you can enjoy beautiful displays all year round.
Flowering bulbs will give a burst of colour from mid-winter through to mid-spring. In summer, you can use bedding plants, summer bulbs, shrubs and perennials. In autumn, fill pots with perennials, late bulbs and plants for autumn colour or berries. Over winter, opt for winter-flowering shrubs, hellebores and structural plants, which look particularly striking covered with frost or snow.
An all-year-round display will need to contain evergreen plants to form a framework that other, more transient plants, can be built around.
Group pots together, which allows you to match flowering and foliage plants, and move seasonal flowering plants into the group as they reach their prime. Remove them once they start to fade. Standing pots together also reduces moisture loss as the leaves form layers, which trap moisture underneath, creating a more humid area for all the plants.
If you are adding annuals to your permanent scheme, think carefully about colour. Vibrant colours such as reds, oranges, yellows and reddish purples look good in pots which have warm colours such as terracotta, browns or yellows.
To create a more peaceful, sedate atmosphere, use relaxing colours – blues, mauve, pale pinks and purples, white and cream are also calming. Combine them with a beefy foliage plant, such as hostas, for a wonderful contrast and put them into blue, white, silver or green containers to complete the cool effect.
If you have purples and darker colours you need a sunny spot because they disappear in shade, whereas white, pale blue and pale pink stand out in shade.
For permanent plantings in pots, use a loam-based compost as it retains both water and nutrients well. Choose pots as big as possible, which will hold more compost and won’t dry out as quickly. Every year, check that the roots of permanent plants aren’t coming out of the drainage holes in the base of the container or at the surface of the compost. If they are, re-pot them in spring or autumn into a new container, only slightly bigger than the old one, filled with fresh compost of the same mix as the existing growing medium.
Large patio plants like trees and shrubs don’t need re-potting every year, but each spring give them a top dressing, scraping away the upper layer of the compost and replacing with fresh compost containing slow-release fertiliser.