Ready to Garden: Itchy Palms and Spring Planting!

Are your palms itching to dig in the dirt and fill your containers and beds with spring and summer annuals? Our frost date in North Carolina is April 15th but we all know how unpredictable Mother Nature can be.

I learned the hard way not be tempted by all the beautiful flowers arriving in the garden centers in March and early April, since it I find myself scrambling to cover or drag heavy pots to the garage to protect them from a late frost or cold snap if I plant too early.

Do you have favorite annuals you always plant? A couple of my favorites to use in containers are lobelia and angelonia.

 Angelonia, also known as summer snapdragon, comes in a variety of colors, grows in full sun and is drought tolerant. The white variety stays more compact than some of the other colors and grows about a foot tall. I was thrilled to find a new heat-tolerant variety of lobelia last year that bloomed all summer.

Another favorite is coleus. I love its red foliage and use it to pair with white and blue for a patriotic combination for Memorial Day or July 4th!

You can see used here paired with Endless Summer Hydrangea and Queen Anne’s Lace for a Red, White and Blooming Patriotic table.

And here with white sprigs of angelonia and hydrangea for a table centerpiece.

Coleus is easy to grow and root from cuttings, comes in wide variety of colors, sizes, and leaf shapes. Just add water and it will grow! It fills all three rules and categories of “Thriller, Filler, Spiller” when it comes to container gardening~ from tall upright varieties, midsize, mounding varieties, and trailing varieties, to spill over the sides of your pots.

I love the varieties of coleus too that have a punch of bright green to pair with sweet potato vine and pinks and purple flowers. You can see it in my potting shed window boxes here.

A favorite trick I like to use is to add an accent to a pot when it’s newly planted until it has time to grow and fill in. A plate provides an accent in a pot of Blue Salvia, Creeping Jenny and Stock. Salvias, also called sages, are drought tolerant and good choice in containers and beds and borders since bunnies and deer aren’t fans.

I salvaged a broken {*sniff*} Portmeirion Botanic Garden plate as a planter accent  . . .

And used it here another season in my Bicycle Built for Planting.

Adding accents to containers fills in the “dead” space which works for arrangements indoors as well as your outdoor pots.

Here for indoor arrangement with eggs, a bird nest, and stamped spoon marker . . .

And here with bunny in a pot of sweet alyssum, geranium, dusty miller and verbena.

I tucked a broken tea cup in a pot of petunias, million bells and asparagus fern as a planter accent until the flowers fill in.

Black-eyed Susan vine is another favorite to plant, a fast grower and will bloom until pumpkin season!

It grew to cover my bench from a pot and spread over to climb the spokes in my bicycle planter.

It looks like our below freezing days are behind us after our cold snap this weekend, so if you’re looking for me this week, I’m going to digging in the dirt :)

I hope spring planting season arrives where you are soon!

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