What should I plant in my window boxes?

[ChocChipHandbag]

What would you plant if you could put anything in these?

In the past I've had geraniums (bit boring), crocuses (too late), some sort of white trailing thing and various other stuff randomly bought that was underwhelming. I'm a bit of a rabbit in the headlights at the garden centre!

The main window is pretty wide - 1m 20.

The garden faces south, it gets pretty hot in summer.

(Yes, I know the bins are ugly, am hoping to have the wall built higher this year to hide them.)

We had success with nemesias one year. They come in a whole range of bright colours. They do need more water than geraniums though.

And a bonus point if the plants are ones that foxes don't like the smell of- I have a visitor who thinks my boxes are her own personal larder- found a chicken fillet buried in them once 🤮

Some past efforts

And some more

They never last though.

How about herbs? I've got a windowbox with parsley and chives in, looks wonderful with the foliage of the parsley and the chive flowers. Could also put in some thyme too, a variegated version would look lovely.

And they're useful! Don't know if they'd put foxy off though, but at least he could have some nice parsley and chive chicken.

Ha ha. I keep trying and failing to grow herbs in my back garden, might be an interesting experiment, I suppose my worry would be that if the fox was still climbing up there I might end up eating herbs with fox wee on them..

Pansies!

What are the red and white ones in picture 3 ?

I’ll be putting in annuals red mainly, with a bit of purple and pink in my window boxes as it’ll go with the black and white paint on the house. I put in heathers for the winter and they’re still flowering well now !

I can't be sure but I think the red are petunias and the white is lobelia.

chocChipHandbag

thanks

Begonias are the answer for long flowering, low attention, window boxes. Many varieties, lots of different colours, pest free and last well into autumn. And if you have space you can keep through winter for following year.

Beautiful window boxes above!

I usually do osteospermum, because they come in such lovely colours, and sometimes come back next year ... and trailing lobelia. But I've often thought a short, small veronica might look nice too