In a pure sense, "container gardening" connotes a completely new concept created for, or evolving out of, contemporary architecture and its bold use of clean lines and unadorned space. These settings both benefit by and set off a display of plants, bringing many principles of modern interior decoration into play outdoors. Containers are an important part of the picture. They may be included in the architect's or landscape architect's plan, or added by the homeowner in the same way draperies and other decorations are added indoors.
Actually, plants have always been grown into outdoor "containers." The window or balcony box is not new; neither is the stone or ceramic urn, or the recessed or raised garden bed on a patio or terrace. The newness is in the concept itself-a new kind of gardening that brings the landscape into the outdoor living area or up to the house, caters to today's desire for constant change and flexibility, and provides opportunity for creative expression or individuality.
For every type of outdoor container there is a wide choice of suitable vines, hanging plants and landscape plant. And so they provide soft grace and refreshment for a Maine window box or a Texas patio, a metropolitan rooftop garden or a palatial California terrace, a small suburban outdoor living room balcony or an Old World. Large or small, bold or demure, alone or in combination with other plants, vines are indispensable to everyone who has reason to garden in containers-and nearly everyone has.
Advantages of Container Gardening
When there is no real garden, or little time to care for a garden, you can grow plants in outdoor containers and have the effect or feeling of a garden. When the garden area is limited, you can make it seem larger with containers against the house or on the wall. If you like to change or renew garden decor, containers give you flexibility. If you are away from home for long periods, but want a well-groomed garden on a day's notice when you return, containers are ready and waiting to be filled with full-grown plants from the florist or nursery.
Gardening in containers By people who live in rented houses or apartments can take their gardens when they move. By starting plants early indoors people who live where outdoor growing seasons are short can enjoy flowering plants from the first warm day to the first frost. And if the containers are movable, they can be whisked inside when early frost threatens, returned for an "Indian summer" that lengthens the flowering season.
Plants In containers can be changed or rearranged so easily there is no need for monotony. You can experiment with unusual new varieties without risking a glaring gap if they don't thrive. You can replace fading plants and have a summer-long succession of bloom. You can even use container-grown plants in garden beds or with specimens for accent, or to fill gaps when garden plants fail, or to provide a background until newly planted shrubbery can mature. Or you can enjoy some types of container gardens or easy outdoor plants indoors in winter, move them outdoors in summer.
Container gardening often requires less time and trouble than flower beds. Watering is easier and faster; weeding is practically eliminated; gardening doesn't get ahead of you and become a burden. You don't need great quantities of soil or manure. And if you want a garden where cultural conditions are adverse, simply grow the plants in some out-of-the-way spot and set them in containers for temporary display; or buy plants fully grown, enjoy them while they look thriving, replace them when they fade.
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