Container gardens have made gardening more accessible to many people. They’re perfect for people who only have a patio or porch, for those with mobility issues, beginner gardeners, and even kids. If you have a container garden with herbs and vegetables right outside your door, it’s nice and easy to pop out and grab a couple of things to add to your meals every day. It’s also a little easier to control issues like weeds in container gardens. Whatever your experience level, a container garden is a great way to get gardening.
Among the best parts of container gardening is that you can get really creative with your arrangements. There are endless ways to arrange your containers on your patio and endless plant combinations you can grow together in containers. Your container garden can be completely different from one year to the next! You can combine veggies with flowers, you can do a color theme for each container, or you can go for an overall style and theme. Stumped for ideas? Here are a few Iowa container garden design ideas that you can recreate!
Container Vegetable Garden
If you’d like to grow mostly vegetables in your container garden, the most important thing is to decide what you’d like to grow, and then look for containers appropriate for the vegetables you want. Potato bags work quite well for growing potatoes on a patio, but you can also grow them in deep plant pots. For carrots, you’ll want a fairly deep planter as well. Strawberries, on the other hand, can be grown in quite shallow containers or hanging baskets. Peas and beans also don’t need too much soil depth, but they do need a trellis, canes, or wires to climb. If you’re short on space but want to grow lots of herbs, you can adapt a used shipping pallet into a vertical garden and turn the slats into shelf-style planters for a variety of herbs.
You can also do some companion planting in a container garden. You can grow lettuce and spinach underneath tomatoes and peppers, radishes at the bottom of the peas, and green onions with kale or cabbage.
Alpine Rock Garden Containers
If you love the look of rock gardens, you can recreate the alpine esthetic on a smaller scale with a container garden. Clay, concrete, and terracotta pots are great for recreating rock gardens. Alpine plants generally thrive in soil that is very rocky and have very few nutrients, so you don’t need standard potting soil for an alpine container garden. Cactus soil or orchid mix is a good base. Add in some attractive gravel, decorative stones in a few different sizes, and some of your favorite succulents.
You could also create a tiered look with terra cotta pots in three different sizes. It’s a good idea to use some bamboo stakes to stabilize your pots. Fill the largest pot with soil and place your decorative rocks. Then place your next size smaller pot on top of the soil in the first pot. Push your bamboo stake down through the hole into the soil of the first pot for stability. Make sure the bamboo is small enough not to block the drainage hole completely, and then fill that pot with soil. Then do the same with the next smaller pot on top of that. You could also use pots that may have broken to add an interesting look. Once you’ve got your pots arranged in tiers, start adding in your plants.
Some plants that are great for rock gardens include sedums, sempervivum, echeverias (also known as hens and chicks), creeping thyme, and dianthus (also called pinks or Sweet William).
Container Cut Flower Garden
If you’d like to grow an assortment of flowers in containers for making your own bouquets, you’ll want to plan it out based on bloom times. Growing a variety of flowers that bloom all season, and at different times throughout the season means you’ll always have a variety of flowers to choose from. You can plant an assortment of different flowers together in a pot so that when you do cut some blooms, your containers still look colorful and abundant.
Flowers that are excellent for cutting, and grow well in pots in sunny locations include zinnias, cosmos, and snapdragons. Basil or oregano can do double duty as a culinary herb or greenery in bouquets. Container gardens with partial shade could host hellebores, columbines, and astilbes. Lambs ear is a lovely greenery plant for part shade containers. For locations with all-day shade, consider bleeding hearts, coleus, foxgloves, and hostas.
If you’d like to put together a container garden, give us a call for concierge shopping or order online. From containers to soil, decorative stone to plants and seeds, we can help you set up a beautiful container garden of your own! We can prepare your order for curbside pickup or delivery within the Des Moines metro area.
