Year-long hanging baskets?

[CtrlAltDelete89]

I'm quite new to gardening so please forgive any stupid comments/questions!

I moved into a new house last year and inherited space for some hanging baskets at the front and back of the house.

I'd love to have some lovely flowers in them throughout the year (or at least most of the year, as far as it's possible without massive effort).

How do others approach this? What plants are good for baskets for each season? Do you do a separate basket for each season, or just plant your baskets with different flowers that naturally come out at different times?

And if the former, does that mean you have to physically plant new plants each season, or do you have different baskets so that some can go in the greenhouse when they've stopped flowering and then come back out again?

Any other basket tips are welcome!

I used to do this commercially. Most people have two sets of baskets, one for summer and one for winter. In the summer you have tons of choice of bedding plants; in the winter it's generally violas, pansies, bellis, some greens, bulbs, around some kind of upright. But if you're doing traditional-style hanging baskets, you can't just retire the old one into a corner and then hang it up again next season. The soil gets knackered fast, so you generally need new compost, and some traditional basket plants just won't really look good if you keep them - they'll have gone leggy, or they won't last long (eg., violas, which may come back or self-seed, but not with enough intensity/reliability to look good).

In winter you ought to feed a basket at least every couple of weeks and in summer at least every week (frankly, I do not).

I am not wild keen on the eco implications of all of this. I have planters on my windowsills rather than baskets, because they dry out less, and I like planting herbs in mine, and swapping out part of the planting but not all. There are lots of plants that will grow in quite a restricted space and will go through a whole season - trailing ivy, creeping thyme, oregano (there are varieties with pretty leaves), etc. Or you can grow plants you will later put into your garden - so sometimes I'll make up a basket with a dinky bay tree in the centre as the 'upright'. It looks nice and then, when it's bigger, can be grown on or trained into a lollipop shape you can keep in a pot by the door.

Basically, though, hanging baskets are not low-effort. If you want colour that will reliably keep going, you're better with pots or planters.

Thank you so much, that's so helpful. And good to know re: the eco-ness of it - that's important to me and something I hadn't considered!

Agree, it's a lot of work. The bigger the planter, the less you need to water it. I have about 6 empty baskets in the shed that I should probably get rid of. I don't feel they're a good beginner project, it can be a bit disheartening when you forget to water while on holiday.

Potentially you could put in hardy succulents that might be happy year round (depending on where you live). I have a few that survive the winter (down south, only a few days of snow). I think they're Sedum rupestre, Sedum kimnachii (both trail really well), Sedum acre, Sedum album. You can see a sedum trend there... I also have a trailing blue glaucous pointy leaf thing with yellow flowers, no idea what it's called.

You're welcome - always good to know my useless knowledge isn't actually totally useless!

@Agapornis - your trailing thing wouldn't be bulbines, would it? I've seen them work with other succulents.

@SarahAndQuack no it's not bulbines, sorry I phrased that in a confusing way. It's another succulent. A bit like Senecio blue chalk sticks, but not that. I was looking at the sedeveria hybrid but that doesn't seem to trail. Hmm.