Along with the Memorial Day weekend comes the opportunity to splash annual color into your home landscape. Containers filled with colorful annuals can serve as a greeting at your entryway, divide an area, serve as camouflage for eyesores, and adorn the side of your home hand gracefully from your porch. They can be that instant impact of bright color as your perennials develop into their season of bloom.  But gardener beware…container gardening can be habit forming For me, roaming through greenhouses with the overwhelming selection of plants can be exhilarating. I spent a good 2 hours plus last week roaming the aisles of Sunnyside Gardens, checking out the new selections, and securing my “first round” of container plants for the season.  With all the choices out there….how do you know what combinations to plant?

Two years in succession I attended workshops by Steve Silk, a contributing editor to Fine Gardening magazine.  He is a container gardening fanatic, boasting upwards of 100 containers throughout his Connecticut home each year. Steve provided me with a formula for selecting and planting containers that I absolutely love and follow religiously in all my freestanding, hanging and window box containers. It is simple but the effects remarkable.  Steve suggests 3 basic elements of plant form and color is followed in your container planting scheme: thrillers, fillers, and spillers. Steve describes the thriller plant as a “center piece plant with star quality”.  This plant is usually large and bold. The filler plant is defined as the “spicy element” of foliage/flowers that compliments, not overwhelms the main plant (your thriller). The spiller plant is the final layer that dangles over the edge and out of the container.

With my planting container selected, I start with my thriller plant and design around that. Thrillers are those attention-getting plants due to their color/shape of foliage, height or drama of the flower. One of my favorite thrillers is the Cana.Although the flower may bloom only a few weeks, the foliage gives you great drama and texture all season long. During my trip to Sunnyside Gardens last week I observed their use of the banana plant as a thriller in several containers that looked outstanding!  Some other great thrillers include decorative grasses and your basic spike plant.

Next layer is my filler plant.  I like to think of these as the denser plant that gives depth to the container. It also provides a visual transition step-down from your thriller. Select your filler for contrast in shape and compliment to color of the thriller. Usually the filler is a muted color of the thriller that not only fills up the pot, but will hide the stems of the thriller. I tend to alternate foliage and flowering plants as fillers.  Some of my favorite fillers are: Geraniums, Decorative Kale; Coleus, and Wave Petunias.

The last element to add to my container is a spiller.  This is what you would consider your “pot-edge” plant that spills over the sides of your container. It gives some breadth to your overall planting scheme. They can cascade over the pot edges and you can weave a few into the filler layer to blend. Swedish ivy, Vinca, Lobelia, Alyssum, and Sweet Potato vines are just a few examples of great spillers.

As with any plantings, you need to begin with great soil.  Yes it really does matter what goes in that pot.  Make sure your pot has drainage holes to start. Poor drainage is a sure fire way to kill off your plants in no time flat.  Secondly line the bottom with gravel/stones. This not only helps promote good drainage, it tends to anchor the pot. My recipe for a moisture retentive fast draining potting mix includes combining light potting soil with 1 part compost and 1 part mulch.  When selecting plants for your container be sure you are choosing those suitable for your site and growing conditions, e.g. amount of sun, shade, moisture.

Basic care of your container garden should include daily checking during dry spells to make sure they are moist. Containers dry out quicker than your property gardens. When the tops are dry and crumbly, water the soil until the excess water runs out the bottom.  You can feed your container plants weekly using a basic water soluble fertilizer such as Miracle-Gro or Peter’s.  If you just don’t have the time for that, choose a slow release fertilizer such as Osmocote or Milorganite and mix into the initial potting mix, then plan to re-fertilize midsummer. Be sure to keep deadheading your plants throughout the season and trimming back some of the “spillers” to keep the flowers/foliage full.  You will enjoy those thrillers, fillers and spillers all season long!

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* SueAnn DuBois is a Master Gardener and partner to the husband-wife team of Chips Landscaping.
 Chip’s Landscaping designs, constructs, and maintains outdoor landscape and water garden features in Saratoga County.