Victoria BC has hanging baskets on the downtown lamp posts. The colours are mixed and extravagant. When I first moved here, I tried to use all the flowers that the city horticulturists used in my own containers.
Victoria’s list of flowers in hanging baskets:
Geranium ‘Shirley Claret’
Lamium Galeobdolon ‘Variegatum’
Lobelia ‘Fountain Blue’
Lobelia ‘Sapphire’
Petunia ‘Rose Madness’
Schizanthus ‘Hit Parade’
Tagetes ‘Gnome’
Tagetes ‘Lulu’
Viscaria Oculata ‘Choice mix
After a few years I developed my own style of container garden changing it according to the weather and my location. Right now, I have an eastern exposure and the sun leaves in the early afternoon. I don’t have to worry about watering the plants twice a day in the July heat. On the other hand, the sun loving plants are little slow growing. I grow many perennials and just tuck in some annuals around the edges every spring.
Gentian and annual dahlia. Blue gentian and blue red colour of dahlia harmonize so well.
Golden rod and lysimachia
I like putting shells in the containers, no reason.
Sedum autumn joy and anise hyssop. Fall plants like sedum and golden rod are blooming early.
A basket of white flowers, small carnations, scented geraniums and white geraniums. I am starting to enjoy one colour in one container.
For colour, you can’t beat portulaca. It loves heat and full sun.
Happy gardening all you gardeners out there. A note to those who are “landless peasants” like me, you can grow anything without a tap root in a container.
Sybil, I just now had a chance to look at this diary so I will add some of my previously posted pics. of my garden because it looks so good, better than real live, and the last week the heat took some of my best plants.
Good to see a gardening diary up today…
Yours is an artfully arranged container garden. I love it!
The various foliage textures and the heights of the plants
make great “garden design.”
Sybil, I was in Vancouver two years ago and visited the Sun Yat-Sen Garden. I was so jealous to see that they had bamboo growing there, and I couldn’t find any here in Florida. Of course I did get some on the web, and am forced to keep it in containers, because they say it will take over. I just love it, as do the cats who are always eating it. At that time we were in terrible drought, but not now – it rains every day. If I get the urge to complain, I remember the drought, and the happy bamboo. Still fairly envious of your growing climate. I really want peonies.
Thanks for your kind words.
I love that Sun Yat-Sen Garden especially where it is situated. Also Van Dusen gardens, I love them. They are
much better than the much publicized Butchard Gardens
(and cheaper).
Some bamboo does not spread – I think it is called clump bamboo. The one I have was from a pruning scrap about 5″ that was down 2 feet deep when we dug the garden. It had started to grow, so I took it home, much like a pet. It is 6 feet tall after 2 years.
There is a Sarah Bernhardt peony which is very fragrant.
Beautiful. Ah, the sanity of nature…
a garden always makes sense.
I’m still dithering about whether or not to make a trip to the Northwest this summer. Victoria looks lovely – I’m feeling some stirrings of motivation.
While I love the tough Texas native plants that mean “home” to me, sometimes I get a craving for lusher, greener climes. And Texas in August is Hell. Some of my best vacation memories are of bundling up in coat and gloves early in the morning in August on a mountain or in north country.
I can’t grow anything in containers outside. It’s all I can do to remember to water my houseplants often enough to keep them alive. Outdoors in this heat, well, I’m just hopeless. People do grow container plants here, but they’re better at paying attention than I am. I have a yard, so I stick with planting where things stay watered for a few days.
I love that lysimachia. I put things in pots too (indoors). Shells, and lately I’ve been into pretty smooth river rocks.
For contrast from Texas you would love to walk in the temperate rain forests, with the moss hanging from the trees and ferns covering the ground. Giant maples host little gardens in the crooks of their branches.
The forests are usually dry in August but if you go deep enough where there is a spring you get the rain forest feeling.
Vancouver Island generally is more dry than the mainland because it is basically a rock in the gulf stream.
I would recommend going up to Long Beach on west Vancouver Island where you can look out to sea with no land between you and Japan. Nearby is a small section of rain forest.
Emily Carr’s painting of the rain forest. Vancouver Art Gallery
Hey Sybil, I’m not much of a gardener but I love how you noticed these flower pots on lampposts. Indeed, many cities in Romania have done the same including Târgu Mureş, where I was yesterday. It’s very nice 😉
Pax
HOw lovely! I admire anyone who can do such great things with nature. I so look forward to viewing your examples of this beauty. I think you so much for showing.
I visited Victoria several years ago and fell in love with the place. I really liked the garden (I forget the name.) We stayed at the Empress Hotel. It was fabulous, so different from South Florida where I live.
I use containers for any plants that can’t take the heat and/or nemotodes in Florida. Right now, I’m trying to coax some balsam seedlings into pretending it isn’t that much more hot and humid here in zone 11. But most of my container gardening is with cacti and succulents. I just happen to have a pic of my front porch. Sorry it’s a little out of focus but I just got the camera last week. As you can see, I use anything I can find for containers.
The old chest with the whimsical containers looks
great together.
Container gardening is going to grow as more people
move to the cities. Behind my home there are four monster
homes on a lot that used to have 2 cottages. So you
can imagine space around these homes is tight.
Rooftop gardening is also getting very popular here.
It is supposed to be very good for the environment.
Some stores are taking up collections for their own
rooftops.
The Empress is now The Fairmont Empress but it looks the
same. The service is great, the prices are very high and
the setting is very very busy. There are tons of Bed &
Breakfasts though. Best time to visit Victoria is
May-June and Sept-Oct. NOT July-August when is hot and
dry and very crowded with millions of tourists, 3.5
million visitors a year. (that is only counting those
who registered in hotels, etc.)
Such a wacky easy to mutate plant, I never know what will come up, but it is always colorful and oddly shaped. Sorry no pix 🙁 the digital camera got left on a bus a while back.
Kong Coleus, new this year.
Is that the one?
I’ve got one with the same coloring, but hybridization with one of the fingered varieties has given it a nice lobed leaf edge.
I also have one that is crossed with the lemon colored variety to give a very nive Yellow, Red and Green leaf.
I must get a digital camera and do a diary on my coleus.
(I’m wondering if admitting an obsession with coleus is good for my business?)
This summer, I am gardening in large pots, plastic colored to look like clay. Lettuce, parsley, dill doing very well, yielding nice salads. Also one Brandywine tomato, which (rather to my surprise) is growing stongly, flowering now. Whether it produces fruit, we shall see. Maine is still about a month from tomatoes.
These very interesting containers were posted by their maker on an early Saturday Morning Garden Blogging, just after Frankenoid started it at dKos. I’m hoping to see them next time I do a southern road trip.
And, Sybil, your pictures have just moved Victoria ‘way up on my must-visit list.
Thanks for the link to those TUFA containers.
We had the recipé and the space and were going to make
some but we never had the time. I understand that they
breakdown after a while. Lately I have seen lightweight
containers that look like concrete/clay/stone but they
are still too expensive.
I use Sunshine #4 potting mix and it makes all the
difference in the health of container plants.
Victoria really is a garden city. Hope you do get the chance to visit.