Hi, I'm Marci Degman, the aspiring gardener, and today, we're going to talk about year round container gardening. And, the concept of year round containers is that, we don't just put in geraniums or spring annuals, and then in the winter just nothing. What we do is, we put plants in that are going to give interest in every season. Now, this particular plant is an enkianthus, which will lose its leaves. But, it's a good example of a good place to start. There are box, and different types of shrubs that are tall and colander like this, that are really good for the central part of your container. So, what I want to do, is start with that. And, the key is that most of the plants are perennial, and do show something each season. What we can do later then, is we can always add annuals for color during different seasons. But, we want to have a structure that's perennial. So, this is a good example of how I might start out a container, a small tree or shrub. You can take a lot of larger shrubs, and you can keep them small by trimming them and pruning them, and keeping them the shape that you want. So, this is a good example of the height that you might want in the center of your container. Then, what I'm going to do, is I have some black grass. This is black mondo grass, and it's actually an evergreen, or I like to say everblack. And, I took this out of the garden, so I'm going to divide that up a little bit, so I can spread it around a little. And, these are wonderful, because they do have little plantlets that grow off of them, and you can spread them all around. So, what I want to do is, I want to make kind of a, I want to leave some space for other flowers and things that I want to add through the year. So, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to leave a space, and then plant another clump of the black grass, because this will look nice all year long. See, as you can see, it has berries, and previous to the berries, it gets purple flowers, so it also has a flowering period, which is really nice. So, there's a lot of things that you can get right out of your yard once they're mature, and just make up containers. So, what I want to do now that I've left this space in the middle, is I want to add a plant for seasonal interest. Now, this time of year, in late summer and fall, you can find cyclamens, which are annuals in my area, but they might be a perennial in yours. We have some smaller perennial versions that we do grow. This one will die in the winter, but it'll give me great fall color. And, you could take it inside as a houseplant later if you wanted to. But, see how that just gives you all that color. Got the black grass year round, we've got this woody shrub for structure. In the spring, I can take this out, I can add a geranium, I can put seed here. Whatever flowers you like, you can add. You could add perennials into this, perennial flowering plants, but I like to leave a space for things that bloom in the spring, summer, and then in the fall. So, there you have year round container gardening.
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