How to Give Your Garden Containers Winter Interest.

Winter in the garden. Tired of passing your depressing pots of dirt that sit near your door? Spruce them up for the dull season.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• A Hand Trowel or Hori Hori.
• Potting Soil.
• 1-Gallon Evergreen Shrubs and/or Perennials.
• 4-Inch Pots of Pansies or Primroses.
• Earth Friendly/Pet Safe Slug Bait.

1. First things first, attack the soil in your pots. Use your garden tool to cut out old roots from last summers annuals.
2. Fatsia japonica The fun begins when you start planting. In the main picture, we've planted a pot for a shady patio using: Carex buchananii (Leatherleaf Sedge); Heuchera 'Plum Pudding'; Gaultheria procumbens (wintergreen); and Pieris japonica 'Prelude' (Lilly of the Valley Shrub).
   
   Other combinations could include:
   
   * Cornus sericea (Red Twig Dogwood); Chamaecyparis pisifera 'Mops' (Golden Mops False-cypress); Bergenia 'Bressingham Ruby'; and Vinca minor.
   
   * Chamaecyparis lawsoniana ‘Blue Surprise’; Carex morrowii 'Evergold'; and Heuchera 'Green Spice'.
   
   Other great plants to include: Helleborus 'Ivory Prince'; Carex testacea (Orange Sedge); Phormium varaieties (New Zealand Flax); Buxus sepervirens 'Suffruticosa' (True Dwarf Boxwood); Nandina Varieties (Heavenly Bamboo); Fatsia japonica (Japanese Aralia); Euphorbia varieties; Azalea varieties; Evergreen Ferns... visit a good local nursery to see many more options.
   
   Plant close together, since these plants wont grow much during the cool season. Don't forget to "tease the roots" or untangle the roots with your fingers after you knock them out of the original pot and before they go into their new home. Fill in any spaces with soil from the bag of potting soil.
3. Tuck pansies or primroses into any space around the front of the pot. Finish by sprinkling slug bait around the base and watering your new container garden thoroughly.

Tips & Warnings

• I live in zone 8, most of these plants thrive in zone 7-9.
• Once the frost as gone (Mothers Day for me), you can move the plants into permanent places in the landscape and replant the pots with your normal summer annuals.
• If your winter is dry or the pots are under trees or roof eves, you may need to water every other week.
• You don't need to fertilize in the winter, it's too cold for plants to take in nutrients.
• You still have enough time plant a few spring bulbs. Tuck them in wherever you can find space. Tall Daffodils and Tulips in back and short Crocus in front.