Summer Garden Window Box and Hanging Basket Plant Combinations

Along a walkway leading into the Cincinnati Flower Show, window frame facades are set up to hold box planters and hanging basket displays. Here gardeners found plant combination ideas that use flowering and foliage plants easily available at local plant stores. The flowering plants will bloom throughout the summer until the first frost.

Morning Sun Container Gardens

A container garden needing early morning sun is one incorporated white Bacopa, rosy Calibrachoa, white sweet Alyssum, a Euphorbia called Diamond Frost® and a double dark pink tuberous Begonia. Gardeners will want to protect the tuberous Begonia from harsh sun exposure and, despite the drought tolerance of Euphorbia, water daily during the hot summer days of the growing season.

In another window box for morning sun, perennial plants are mixed with two plants many gardeners also grow indoors, the purple and red flowers of Fuchsia and a dragon wing Begonia. The purplish burgundy patterned foliage of Heuchera is a foil for the dainty hanging yellow Begonia flowers. After summer, resourceful gardeners will want to plant the Heuchera and Lamium ‘White Nancy’ in the ground, meanwhile the Fuchsia and Begonia can make dramatic houseplants until spring.

Duckfoot Coleus and Begonia Plants in Pots

Coleus and begonia plants fit well together in pots or window boxes. They have similar light requirements to grow healthy, avoiding hot afternoon sun.

Osteospermum, vinca vine and creeping jenny with a duckfoot coleus is a combination with a lot of trailing plants. The dark leaves of a duckfoot coleus make a good background for the blue Torenia flowers with its emerald green foliage that meanders rather than falls straight down off the edge of a planter.

Coleus and begonia plants are economical choices for a gardener. After growing them outside, it is possible to save the coleus and begonias. Each entire plant can be grown as a houseplant or from them, take cuttings and root over winter for next year’s garden.

Eclectic Potted Garden Ideas

Eclectic potted garden ideas start with finding unusual containers. Long before the vast array of colorful garden pots now offered at local big-box stores, enterprising container gardeners were finding their own vessels in which to grow plants. The old worn-out work boot with a cutout toe planted with succulents is now a classic, as is the teacup planted with a miniature African violet idea.

At the 2010 Cincinnati Flower Show, designers left no empty container space unplanted. A garden display using a simple forest green painted desk and chair had every crevice planted; letter holder, lamp base, chair seat and drawers, while the tiny tin watering cans holding succulents were the drawer pulls. Not meant for years of sustainable gardening without replanting, but a creative bed made out of everyday implements to grow flowers.

Garden window boxes and hanging baskets, for many gardeners, is their only landscape. There is an array of plant combinations that will grow healthy and flower all summer. Gardeners will find inspiration and new ideas at events like the Cincinnati Flower Show.