Plant Your Easiest-Ever Spring Pots With These Colorful Container Garden Recipes

Garden expert Mark Thompson relies on color theory as a recipe for front-stoop success

If you’ve ever wondered why some hues look better together, it comes down to the color wheel. Just as a painter considers shade pairings in their art, a gardener can apply the same rules when picking plants. For these colorful late-spring, early-summer container gardens, Mark Thompson, co-owner of Shoppe, a garden boutique in Birmingham, Alabama, shares pretty pairings to brighten up your home exterior.

Related: 39 Colorful Spring Container Garden Ideas

Hat Trick

For this container in full sun, Thompson opted for a triadic scheme, using colors that are equidistant on the wheel. “Per the old-school method, [I incorporated] three different growth habits into this design—with something bushy as the filler, a spiller at the bottom, and a thriller popping out at you from the top,” he says.

Ingredients: yellow melampodiums, 'Truffula Pink' gomphrenas, plumbagos, and ‘Blue Daze’ evolvulus

How To: Begin by planting the yellow melampodiums as the focal point and some ‘Truffula Pink’ gomphrenas behind for height. Then add in two blue flowers—plumbagos and ‘Blue Daze’ evolvulus—to trickle out in the front.

Tips

For more staying power, line a wicker basket with a garbage bag, waterproof florist foil, or a small pot before adding the soil.

Plenty of Purples

“There’s no foliage except for the blooming plants’ greenery, which highlights the monochromatic feel,” says the garden pro, who selected three purple flowers. Hanging baskets do best when watered twice a day, so it’s extra important to fertilize regularly, notes Thompson. “The more often you’re watering, the more the nutrients naturally drain out, which means you need to put them back in,” he explains.

Ingredients: sheet moss, angelonias, fan flowers, and million bells

How To: To layer in more texture, Thompson first lined the planter with sheet moss. On the inside, a piece of burlap helps corral the contents (you can also use foil or plastic with holes for this). Fill it with loosely packed soil to about 2 1/2 inches from the top, and then build in the blooms—angelonias, fan flowers, and million bells.

High Contrast

There are endless complementary colors, but Thompson chose the most prominent combination—red and green—for this planter. “We typically associate this pairing with Christmas, so to see it used in a way that feels super summery is a nice change,” he says. Whether used in a window box or in a pot on the porch, this low-maintenance combo will flourish throughout the summer with medium water and sunlight. This English-inspired container calls for two types of asparagus ferns and an assortment of red blooms.

Ingredients: plumosa and foxtail asparagus ferns, ‘Solenia Red’ begonias, ivy geraniums, and New Guinea impatiens

How To: “When planting, I almost always work from biggest to smallest,” Thompson says. Here, he positioned the begonias first to allow room for them to fall gently over the edge and then added the other plants around them to fill in the gaps and provide dimension.

Better Together

For this combo, a pair of rust-toned terra-cotta pots plays into the split-complementary method approach to color. “When doing a grouping of pots, I like to break it up with a single plant in one container to give a place for the eye to rest,” says Thompson.

Ingredients: purple angelonias, 'Orange Marmalade' crossandras, ornamental oregano, and purple fan flowers

How To: In the planter on the left, purple angelonias stand tall with summer-loving ‘Orange Marmalade’ crossandras in the middle and a cool green ornamental oregano draping over the rim. To keep things simple, purple fan flowers (scaevolas) completely fill the second vessel.

Bursts of Brilliance

With a palette of analogous colors (those next to one another on the wheel) as his guide, Thompson chose vibrant pink and orange for this container’s main elements and yellow green for its accents. “Designed to be against a wall, this one descends from the highest growing to the lowest,” he says.

Ingredients: 'Electric Lime’ coleus, pentas, bicolored lantanas, ‘Silver Falls’ dichondra

How To: Starting from the back, plant an 'Electric Lime’ coleus; then add the coral-hued pentas and tuck in the bicolored lantanas on either side of that. ‘Silver Falls’ dichondra trails down the front of the bamboo vessel to complete the look. “It’s a fun plant that will grow very long. When you want to give it a haircut, just trim it with scissors,” notes Thompson.

Tips

If you’re placing the container in a spot where you’ll see it from all sides, round it out by positioning an additional lantana and dichondra in the back.

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