4-Plant Wonders

With the help of my mom who was visiting, and my 2 younger children, I was able to get my pots filled up this past week.

This year I'm going totally boring: each one has just 4 plants.

The same 4 plants, actually.

So I've read that when designing containers, you should have a "thriller," a "filler," and a "spiller."

That's basically what I did, but I left a little bare space that I'm hoping will be filled in by my fillers and spillers.

These 3 pots are out front, each on their own little platform.

For some reason I feel compelled to show all 3, even though they are all the same.

Feel free to skim.

Here are the four plants:

1. My thriller: Dahlinova, 'Lisa Dark Pink.'

2 & 3. My fillers: dark pink petunia and blue lobelia

4. The spiller: creeping Jenny, otherwise known as Lysimachia nummularia 'Goldi' (but creeping Jenny is way more fun to say, so I'm sticking with that!)

I'm really hoping I can manage to keep these watered this year, so that they'll bloom happily for me all summer long. I'm adding it to the kids' chore list, so that should help somewhat! 

The kiddos were a bit more creative in their efforts:

My daughter's, in the blue boat:

She's got another Dahlinova, the bright orange there.

Then she's filled in around it with bright pink asters 'Pot 'n Patio Mix', bright yellow Bidens, orange Diascia 'Juliet,' and trailing orange calibrochoa 'Noa Orange Eye'.

She loves it bright, can you tell? :)

Finally, my youngest would not be denied a pot of his own.

He has more of the yellow bidens, the orange calibrachoa, and some deep pink petunias.

Oh, I guess I do have a 6th pot over by the shed door (very small in the background of the above photo.)

It's got the asparagus fern in it that I [barely] kept alive through the winter, from last year's containers. It's actually doing quite well outdoors again. So hooray for cheap!

I feel like my containers are very hit-or-miss.

Here's hoping this year is a hit!