9 Gorgeous Pots: Texture-Rich Garden Design Ideas

Well friends, you know I love a container and it would not be a garden of mine unless I absolutely showcase some spectacular containers. So I'm gonna walk you through the nine containers in this garden and give you my thought process as to how I selected scale, shape, and all the elements that are going inside. So we're gonna start here with this one. This is a container that you saw me shop for and I was telling you I was gonna do something special here. Now this is a pinched lip container and this is a container that literally I will never put a tree in. I will never put anything with a robust root system because you'll have to practically crack the thing to get it out. What I love to do with these is I love to play up their shape and use them as a sculptural element. So what I've done here is I've actually just planted, this is nine Selaginella aria. This is one of my favorite mosses and it's actually already growing and doing the thing that I love, which is creeping gently over the edge. I think it adds a little bit of drama, a little bit of kind of like just nestled in. The other thing, I love using a moss with a textured container because this is like texture on texture so it's super duper fun. And then just to give you like another idea, I've actually planted the base of it with a grass. This is a Chorus Ogon and what I wanted is I wanted this really beautiful sight line coming down this walkway and I didn't wanna interrupt the shape and this grass accomplished kind of what I wanted, which is almost putting it in a little nest of grasses so this gets to shine all on its own. Let's go on to the next one. All right, friends, we are gonna start on the right side here with this duo. Now, when I am composing containers, I love to play with different centerpieces and so we can look at this as a duo or a trio because we have this beautiful post here and sometimes visually that helps pull it together. I've gone for two really contrasting elements. The first is this contorted filbert. This is one called Red Dragon and I'm using this in a really simple pot and what I love is that it's creating kind of an upside down triangle shape. It has great volume, it has great texture. What I then did is I decided to go really heavy into the texture. I'm bringing in a grass that I used in the landscape. This is Carrick's Cappuccino. I also have grasses on either side, which is this Carrick's Ribbon Falls and then I decided I wanted a myriad of soft elements. So we have this absolutely gorgeous ranunculus. It's mixing a lot of colors that I used in the landscape. So we've got this beautiful creamy white and a dusting of pink around the edges. I flanked it with another one on the other side and then I went with a kind of a trio of trailers. This first trailer is actually a jasmine and what's interesting is from afar, it kind of looks like Diamond Frost Euphorbia, which is another little twinkly bit that I like to use and then I felt like I needed some fullness and volume and so I used this Heuchera Marmalade and it has a bit of pink dusting on the underside and this is actually picking up on the pink over in my ranunculus. Now two other elements, this one is my gara. It is a so white gara. You can see the old blooms have faded here and it's about ready to bud and pop more. I wanted something really wispy and playful because what you'll notice is I've got the firmness of the sticks here and then the wispiness of all the grasses and the gara and that to me, that play between wispy and very firm, it adds a lot of texture to a container. Last but not least, I have my Helichrysum here. I wanted a silver tone coming through. I actually dug this out of the pot next to my front door because I wanted a really established trailer to give the illusion that this container had been here a long time. The other thing that I did is we top dressed all of these with moss and this is the moss that I picked up at the floral supply store and this acts as just like a nice living mulch. It covers the dirt on the inside and it's just an extra layer that really adds to the overall aesthetic. Okay, let's move on to my very, we'll call it my flowerful container. Okay, so friends, this is my flowerful container. I'm actually showcasing a brand new hydrangea. This is the flowerful hydrangea. This is more like an aborescence. It has this absolutely adorable white bloom and this sucker will just keep going and going and going. This is absolutely coming home to live in my garden. I love this hydrangea so much. It reminds me a lot of the Annabelle or the Invincible because it has this really delicate aborescence leaf and I think that this contrasts so nicely with kind of like the more rock and roll stick situation that I've got going on with my filbert. To kind of add some composition, I really am playing with a lot of grassness, a lot of looseness and so what I did is when I do a container, I like to marry elements so I brought over the same grass but a different variety. This is very similar to ribbon curls. This one is feather falls. I brought in this adorable antique viola. This is Nature Antique Shades. You guys probably saw me start this from seed and this brings in the pink that had the dusting of ranunculus. I also have another one of these gorgeous ranunculus right here which I absolutely love and then to finish off the texture, I chose to use a euonymus. This is a winter creeper and when it gets its winter color, it gets a little pink edge to it which I think is really fun. Oh. Oh my gosh. The very last thing I wanna point out in this container is I felt like it was getting a little too green and so I wanted to interrupt that a little bit and so what I did is I actually held over some senecio. This is just your classic silver dust senecio. However, I left this over from my fall planting and so it's like a good foot tall and I wove it between all of this green to break it up. So really amazing texture, texture first always. Let's head over to this last of the trio and I think it actually may be my favorite. Okay, so here we are. You've seen me use this centerpiece before. This is a Troutman juniper. It's one of my favorites. I absolutely love it. It's a centerpiece I come back to time and time again. This one is grown by Isley Nursery which is a nursery that I really, really love. I feel like their quality is always top notch. Now, this is a different texture than you've seen me use because I'm doing so many containers. I like to vary it up but I like to have a few the same. So instead of just having one Troutman, I actually, this is like something that I always do. I hopscotch throughout my spaces. So just like I used Ranunculus to marry those two, I actually am using my Troutman to marry the lower cut flower pathway and my upper patio up top. And it's a beautiful way to like draw the eye through the space. Now with this container, I'm echoing my same color palette. I've done another hopscotch moment here with my Heuchera. This is Marmalade. It's got that nice pink on the underside. I then accented it with this amazing Verbascum. And then I also brought in another couple elements. This is my classic Ivy. This is Duck Feet. It's wonderful. It's super well-behaved, adorable, dark, tiny leaf. Then for a variegated element, because I don't know if this is something I've talked about before, but I like to generally put one variegated element in every single one of my containers. And for that variegation, I brought in this adorable Tiny Hebe. This one, I actually can't remember what variety this is. I had it in my home nursery. Oh, lights came on. I had this in my home nursery and popped it in here. Now, the aesthetic I was going for with this container was really wild and very textured. So I brought in a couple of different kind of grassy elements. This is a Cordyline, and I just felt like it had a little bit of that dark drama in the middle. And then I backed it with my So White Gara, which is butted up. And then off the back for a little bit of texture, because you can see this container coming back here, I popped in Carrick's Feather Falls. And then last but not least, I have another one of these antique shades, the Viola. Okay, I think it's time for us to head up to the upper patio, and I'll show you those three. Alrighty, so we just touched on the Troutman that's down below in the Cut Flower Walkway, and I brought that same centerpiece up here. And the reason I like to do that, again, is I'm drawing the eye through the garden. And so we've got this sweet little Troutman here, and then I'm using some other elements that I'm gonna repeat throughout. This is Senecio Angel Wings. This is the same silver as the traditional Dusty Miller that you saw below, but I brought it in in a different leaf shape. So visually, it ties together, but it adds that extra interest and whimsy by using a different, kind of more rounded shape. This also is like a substitute for a heuchera that I might have used front and center on the other ones. I'm, again, bringing in my Renunk. This one actually has a bit more of a purple edge to it than a pink, and I love that it's bringing in some of the darker tones that showcase throughout the garden. I'm repeating my elements of my little Hebe here, and what's really fun is, do you see how this is playing with my bulb foliage? This variegation, it just lightens up the whole darn thing. Now, to add another hint of that variegated foliage, I've flanked it on this side, and I've brought in an ivy called Golden Child, which are kind of a nice little touch to bring a pop of brightness. For lots of movement, I've added three things. My movement comes first in my Verbascum, which unfortunately has blown over, but this is my Verbascum, and it was adding color, texture, movement. For another added foliage, I have my Daffodils in here. This one is Thalia, so it's a pure white. And then off the back, because again, this is double-sided, I am bringing in this beautiful Carex Feather Falls, because as you look at the display this way, if I didn't have something bright and variegated back here, it would kind of feel like a wall of green, which is never really my favorite. Okay, heading over this way. So this is another centerpiece that I am kind of bananas over. This is a beautiful obelisk shape that I picked up at Christensen's, and this adds a lot of height and a lot of drama in this container. So for my centerpiece here, I decided to do something different. What's kind of fun is this topiary is mimicking the shape of my Troutman Juniper, but it's also bringing in the rusted metal that's featured throughout this garden. And I've chosen to use a beautiful vine here. This is actually a honeysuckle called Mint Chiff or Mint Crisp. I'll find the tag, but this is just a really lovely, do you see the mottled foliage? So it's kind of fun to bring a variegated foliage into the centerpiece. I'm repeating from down below this beautiful quarter line, and then to bring in those colors, I'm marrying in my Hyacinth. This is Purple Sensation. This is so adorable in a container. And then I have a touch more of my little violas here, and I chose to work with a little bit of a darker color. And then last but not least, I'm using the Primula. This is a bellarina cream. And what I love is that it's adding just a hit of bright cream at the very base of this container. And then of course, because I love texture, we added in, actually, I should say Claudia tucked in all of this gorgeous moss that we picked up at the Wholesale Florist. This container next to it, I wanted to have it be really simple from the front because I felt like if I did three busy containers, it would be too much. So I actually did this variegated Pieris on the inside and left all the interest on the backside. So I'm gonna take you around to the bottom and I'll show you that. Alrighty, so here we are in the north shade garden area. And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to showcase a little texture trio here. So it's really simple. We have a chorus, which we've used in the landscape, so it really marries in here. I have this Rhygar begonia, which is just gonna go and go and go for days. And then to keep it a little bit edgy, I've brought in some black Mondo grass. All of this, of course, I'm using moss at the base for just like, I just felt like it was nice to cover the dirt, have a little extra texture there. And then the other thing the moss does is I've used moss extensively down on this patio. And so it's kind of fun to have something tie down, even if it's just a little knot. It all helps it relate to one another and helps it feel like that isn't an oddball patio. They're all kind of married into the same location. This adorable shade container has been enhanced by, who knows, every year at this show, people bring around something. So I have a lizard here. There was a gnome somewhere else. Where's my gnome? Oh, I've got a gnome right here. And I freaking love it. Oh, excuse me, and I've got a troll. So I've got a little troll right here. And I just, here's the deal. I am a firm believer that gardening should really not be that serious. And so if someone is gonna drop a lizard or a gnome in my, or a troll in my garden, I don't care. I love it. So this container is really, I wanted it just to be textural. I wanted the colors to be a bit quiet because we have a really busy pot down here. I chose this pot because all of these deep tones coordinate with my Corten planter behind it. Now, this container is totally my jam. I have this gorgeous, gorgeous Fisa carpus. This is called Red Tips. And I just wanted something spiky and a little funky that echoed this awesome, funky container that we have down below. Now to go with this, I have a just a constant classic. This is Fatsia spider's web. And what I love is how bright this white is against this Fisa carpus. And then to bring that white over here, I have a Rygar begonia. This is one of the ones that you saw me pick up at the floral supply shop. Now this is very sweet, but I need to bring more edge back in. And this Black Mondo grass also relates to the other container we just saw. And so Black Mondo grass, I love it. I use it tons. There's two other things that I have in here. I actually have this Creeping Jenny. This was left over from summer installations and I brought it in and forced it along on the inside. And then last but not least, I have this amazing saxifrage. This is a saxifraga and it's called London Pride. And I've used this in between my pavers down here. So again, I'm always transferring elements and colors between the landscape and my containers because I think it helps it feel more like it belongs in the space that you find it. Okay, I've got one final container. Oh, do I have two? Oh, I do have two. You guys, I forgot about this one. This is my edible container. And what I love about it is because of how high it is, this is actually 39 inches high. It's eight feet wide, which is the width of this patio and it's two feet deep. And I feel like this is the perfect spot for herbs, for little edibles, and maybe you're someone who just likes to tinker a little bit and doesn't need a whole lot of space. But essentially what I've done is I've done three centerpieces that are these beautiful balls. This is a blueberry called Sunshine Blue and it just produces like gangbusters. Underneath it, I've gone through and I've done this sweet little woodland strawberry. I have cilantro going on, which is awesome. And then I tried to brighten it a little bit in the middle with some golden oregano. And then carrying back here, we've got amazing mints. I added some violas because no one, like everyone loves an edible flower. And then to soften the edge, I added in trailing rosemary. I actually think this is such a sweet touch because I feel like if I didn't have a trailing element, this container would start to look really, gosh, like too sterile. You know what I mean? So this helps it feel a little soft over here. Alrighty, we're gonna head back to the front and show you the final container. All right, friends, final container of the show. Now this one was really fun. I integrated this one into the wall. And what I love about it is I felt like sometimes you finish these walls and they come to a point and it just feel, it doesn't feel right. So for this one, I have instead stopped my wall right here. I've got my container at the end and it just helps this whole space feel just a little bit more, you know, a little bit softer, a little bit more collected. I'm using the same finish that you've seen me use in the cut flower walkway. And what I decided to do was bring in a tiny topiary form and this mirrors the one that is on the upper patio. So again, we're linking spaces by using materials repeatedly. For this centerpiece, I played with another vine. I had hoped it would bloom, but it's really struggling inside the convention center. I think it just needed more humidity, but this is actually a pink jasmine. And even though it didn't bloom, I still think the green foliage does a wonderful job. And then last but not least, down here, I've kept it really, really simple because I didn't want to interrupt the lines of this container too much, but I did want to soften it. And so what I've done is I've brought in an element that I use a lot to create more of an unstructured softness to the edge. Carrots, feather falls, and then over here on each side, we have more of this Senecio angel wings. So honestly, I think this is a really good example of even if you don't have a floral moment, playing with texture, playing with variation in color, and always bringing in a variegated element. It just helps tell a story, even if you don't have a floral moment. So friends, there we have it. It's my tour of all of the containers and the thought process behind the curation of the final arrangements for the Northwest Flower and Garden Festival. The show is closed. My voice is going. And so with that, I want to thank everyone who came by, who said hello. You really honestly made me feel so special and so loved. And I am so grateful to be given the opportunity to speak to all of you wonderful people right through the power of the internet. And please, as always, say hello to your garden for me. I will see you in the next one. Bye.