Small garden…what do you do with out of season pots or pots in progress?

[BarrelOfOtters]

My husband is of the view have fewer pots and plants is the answer…but it’s not.

I have a small space behind the greenhouse for things not looking their best…so cuttings I’m bringing on, grasses that haven’t sprung back up yet….

what do you do with yours….?

They are at the back of the drive, so visible when we use the back door but not from the front of the house. Yes they look a bit scruffy out of season but this doesn't bother me, an artist's studio is pretty messy.

I'm with your husband a bit (sorry!).

I have a small garden and really miss my old garden's 'staging area' (as I called it). It was the other side of a large shed, got partial sunlight and allowed me to grow pots out of season there.

In this garden, I tend to only have things in pots that look decent all season, or partner seasonal things with the opposite season (e.g. I have snowdrops growing in a large pot that a rose grows in).

Everything else, such as seedlings or cuttings, must go in the greenhouse or, occasionally in the summer months, I pop them in between the plants in the border so they can grow outside but I cannot really see the pot.

My courtyard is small with raised beds and pots. I have to have the pots on show all year round.

I just keep them tidy & weeded if they spring a weed. I don’t have any other space to hide them.

At present I’m watching out for signs of life & am thrilled when I see the bright green tip of something emerging. Some plants are in flower (I’ve forgotten the name!) & my Tête-à-tête daffodils are looking bright in their pots.

I sweep around and under them to get rid of dead leaves, so overall they don’t look too bad and maybe it helps that most of them, but not all, match.
Roll on proper spring!

Good question! I'm planning my small garden and I feel like pots will be more hassle than they are worth. Things growing straight from the ground will look better for longer and won't need watering like pots do. So I was thinking about sticking with climbing plants and bulbs that will flower but nothing that needs doing every year...

It's tricky, isn't it? I was determined to hang on to all of mine but I've had to be strict and I've been gradually been getting rid of mine over the last few years, otherwise my small garden just always looks a bit scrappy. I've got long term plans to divide the garden up a bit, and when I do that I'll deliberately design in some 'hiding places' for out of season pots, but for the time being I'm only hanging onto the ones I really love, and are also evergreen so that I can try and disguise them by placing the pots in bare spots towards the back of the border (not always successfully!) I've found it helps if you put them in black plastic planters- they blend in much better that way. Alternatively could you just put the plants in the ground towards the back of the border? I've become much more gung ho about digging things up and moving them around since I've had a garden with fewer places to hide the 'out of seasoners'- so far everything seems to have survived! I've also become pretty obsessed about finding plants that have a long season of interest- if its only in flower for a month its not coming into my garden! With a small garden I feel you need the plants to work so much harder.

I tuck out of season bulbs that I want to keep at the back of a big shrub - is that do-able? They're covered by the leaves while the shrub is in leaf, and then in winter I bring them back out, re-do the top with some fresh compost and grit, and they're good to go on the patio again.

I do tend to leave tatty pots full of tulips until I'm ready to put dahlias in them, but that's mainly due to lack of time!