Now containers are no longer her only option, Alice Vincent wonders if they still have a place in her garden, or is it time to leave her dolly tubs and chimney pots behind? Illustration Alice Pattullo
The longer I garden, the more I realise that I go through as many cycles in my habits and tastes as the growing world around us, only with far less predictability.
I always slightly envy people who know instinctively what they like in a garden, never tempted to flirt beyond their preferred colour palette or certain style. I’m still something of a horticultural flibbertigibbet, ruling out one thing (peonies were the latest) only to find them cooing at me, siren-like, whether from the ground or the ’gram.
Containers are a case in point. After teaching myself to garden in a small concrete box of a balcony, and then in a larger, more open one, container gardening was all I knew until three years ago. I could get four seasons’ of interest with relatively little fuss out of one large pot; I came to await the arrival of bulbs as the harbinger of spring just like any gardener with flowerbeds. I built up layers of planting that could be – and were – packed into a removal lorry, and I felt fortunate to have them.
Mostly, those pots moved to the garden with me, whereupon the best of them tucked neatly into the sunken path by the back door and have continued to be the low-maintenance wonders they always were. (I can’t rate ferns, Muehlenbeckia, and persicaria cultivars ‘Red Dragon’ and ‘Purple Fantasy’, underplanted with narcissus and spring starflower Ipheion uniflorum, more highly as a zero-effort, shade-tolerant, evergreen container combo.)
However, faced with a blank expanse of grim patio, I began to accumulate more pots to break up all the paving. In came bargain reclaimed chimney pots from Croydon, and rather less affordable Victorian dolly tubs from Herefordshire. I planted them up, and I primped and fussed. I filled antique seedling pots with iris bulbs and terracotta tubs with nasturtiums. Two summers on – one of them blisteringly hot – and I’m trying to purge the bulk of my containers altogether. Could this be the end of my container gardening era?
We’re finally taking up the patio. The new garden design is one built around lower intervention, greater climate consciousness and, frankly, less faffing about now I have a small human to attend to. Pots made me a gardener, but since gaining ground I’ve come to see their reliance on water and
soil nutrition as sustainability failings. The fact is, too many pot-grown plants need replacing too often. It’s not good for the planet or my pocket. I may dream of opulent tubs spilling over with dahlias or sweet peas, but for me the ends increasingly don’t justify the means in a climate crisis.
I am not, of course, ruling out all containers; urban greening depends on them, and their contribution from what grows in them is larger than many think. A recent study showed that even in New York City, an environment far less green than London, photosynthesis from the plants grown in urban gardens was significant enough to absorb the carbon generated by its vehicular traffic. Containers provide an opportunity for planting at different heights and house flowering plants in the depths of winter, something of a lifeline for early pollinators. Certain adventurous plants (mint comes to mind) are simply better contained. Plus I spent a fortune on those dolly tubs.
Instead, I am now container gardening more consciously: only using ones 40cm or wider across (far less needy of all resources), planting them mostly with perennials, and relying on home-made compost for mulch and nutrition. They’ll be watered from the water butt. Ideally, containers should work a little like my beds, with a flow of plants popping up throughout the seasons, not unlike how they used to work on the balcony. Perhaps I’ve not changed so much after all.