Plants around the Swimming Pool

It's hard to believe we've been in this house 24 years! Well not so hard, really. The easiest way to see how the property has changed is by the plantings. The linden trees and Pin oak are 40 - 50 feet tall and all shrubs have reached their mature height. 

As with all homes, certain things need to be replaced and changed after a certain number of years. We noticed that the (original!) pool liner had begun to leak. Yup! It had lasted an incredible 24 years but now was giving up the ghost. So we called the company that had originally installed the pool and talked about what else could be done besides replacing the liner.

We decided to take out the original concrete decking and replace it with interlocking brick.

We gained about an extra 2 feet of space on each side of the pool and a lot of extra new "patio" space at the end of the pool. All in all I think we are really going to enjoy this new expanded area in years to come! I can picture putting some of our deck chairs onto the new patio part and adding some containers full of colourful flowers.

As with all renovations, once you change the first thing, you often need to change something else.

At the back, because the yard slopes downwards towards the back fence, they will build in some steps to descend to the back of the yard. This area could use some plantings so I started to plan what might be suitable.

I think my best bet will be to stick with ornamental grasses. They have a natural beauty that suits water and the lovely swaying plumes will add movement. Their root system is shallow so it will not interfere with brickwork.

What else? Perhaps daylilies and sedum. Both are tough and low maintenance and blend well with the grasses.

Annuals are always good for all season colour.

I will not plant even small trees because of possible damage to the pool by tree roots. Also, I certainly do not need anymore leaves/fruit/catkins in the pool!!

Probably good to stay away from plants that attract bees…. and anything with thorns.

Any other ideas would be more than welcome :)

Thrillers, Fillers and Spillers Part 2

Last week I worked on my deck pots and containers as well as my 2 hanging baskets. Today I finished my front urns.
My favourite plants for the front door urns are Rex begonias and Caladium (which is technically an indoor plant but is fine in Canadian containers). As spillers I raided the garden and added Ajuga and Lysimachia nummuralia. Both urns have the same contents.

The larger urn in the centre of the flagstones features "Red Star Spike", Cordyline, as the thriller, Supertunia Pretty Much Picasso petunias, dark purple petunias and pink impatiens as fillers and
a spiller  - Ajuga - that is once again dug up from the garden.

This one is from a few years ago - I used Heuchera as the Thriller, Rex Begonias as the filler and Lamium (from the garden) as the spiller.

Here is a lovely one we had at work: Kong coleus, dogwood branches and Creeping Jenny as the spiller.

This particular year I used an (overly large) Cordyline spike as the Thriller, red Rex Begonias and Heuchera and Lamium as spillers.

When travelling I once snapped this interesting arrangement around Halloween time. I think all the hotel did was add small pumpkins and hydrangea to a summer container. Looks very good!

Here is an urn within a perennial bed behind a wrought iron fence.

And lastly, sometimes you can add very very simple flowers if the container itself is the star of the show.

Thrillers, Fillers and Spillers Part 1

Yesterday and today I worked on my containers on the back deck. We have a walk-out onto the deck from the kitchen through big sliding doors. It's always been important to us to see colour close up as we eat our meals or while we sit on our loungers, enjoying the last of the wine after dinner.

Years ago in Fine Gardening magazine I remember reading about the rule of thumb for interesting containers: use thrillers, fillers and spillers. In other words
(a) have a focal point - the thriller (usually tall)
(b) fill the container with medium height plants  - the filler
(c) add trailing plants at the edges - the spiller

Last year I saved the peat moss base of 2 hanging baskets along with the hardware - the rounded metal "bowl", the 4 metal chains and the hook. I bought Geraniums and Asparagus fern as the thrillers, Torenia as the filler and pink and white Verbena as well as spillers. I paid a small fortune for the fully planted hanging baskets last year but this year, by making them myself, I saved well over $50! Each!!

Over the years, I have purchased at least 4 Japanese Golden Grass plants (Hakonechloa macra), which the rabbits happily munched until the grasses disappeared. I still love this plant so much that this year,
I decided to dedicate 2 of the pots to Golden Grass alone.

The other pots have grasses or Potato Vine as the Thrillers,  a gorgeous dark new Picotee petunia called 'Pinstripe', Geraniums and Browallia as fillers and Wave Petunias, trailing Lobelia and Lysimachia nummularia (dug out from a far corner of the garden) as the spillers.

This is Pinstripe:

Some of the smaller pots have just sedum in them which I overwintered from last year. Sedum is very drought tolerant and sometimes those small pots dry out as fast as the hanging baskets.

I'm as messy a gardener as I am a cook so the deck was covered with dirt, empty pots, empty bags of soil, etc. I wonder why I didn't include a picture of the deck before I cleaned it up???
:)

(we still need to take the Christmas lights off the pergola posts - ooops!)

I'm quite pleased with the containers this year. They are colour coordinated, they have plants in them that are new to me and I will make sure they are thoroughly watered if the summer is as hot and dry as they predict.

Tomorrow I hope to do the front yard urns.