It’s time to look ahead and plant up your containers or hanging baskets for autumn and winter displays. Planting up your baskets with a fresh display now will allow them plenty of time to establish before the really cold weather sets in!

It’s easy when you follow our system of Thrillers, Spillers and Fillers

1. Choose a container of a suitable size and style
2. Ensure there is adequate drainage in the base
3. Fill to about three quarters with a good quality potting compost and mix in a controlled release fertilise.
4. Choose your selection of plants – Plants used for a long lasting display will include compact specimens of conifers, ornamental grasses, evergreen shrubs as well as bedding plants.
5. Fill the gaps with more compost. Water once and let it settle before topping up once more.
6. Keep the compost moist and dead-head the old flowers when necessary.

Thrillers:

this should be a tall plant for the backdrop to give the display height

Spillers:

these should be trailing plants to be planted at the sides of the container to cascade over the rim

Fillers:

these should be bushy plants to fill the container and ensure it is bursting with colour

As well as providing colourful foliage, evergreen shrubs and conifers are ideal for providing some height at the centre of your hanging basket. Grasses such as Carex ‘Jenneke’ or Festuca glauca can be tucked into any available gap for some added colour and texture while bedding plants and trailing ivy can provide interest at the base and disguise the edges.

Amongst our bedding plants you will find a wide range of plants that are ideal for your containers including pansies, violas, primula, polyanthus, wallflowers and cyclamen.  These can all be used to fill your container with plenty of colour and ensure there are still plenty of flowers on show throughout the darker months when little else is of interest.

TONAL
Use tints of the same colour

HARMONIOUS
Use adjacent colours from the colour
wheel for a calm soothing effect
e.g. red, yellow, orange

COMPLEMENTARY
Use opposite colours for a dramatic effect
e.g yellow, violet

Top Tip:

Colours from the red side of the wheel will make spaces look smaller, so ideal for larger areas.  Colours from the blue side will look more distant.