Pollinator-friendly container plantings

Every spring I fill 10 or 12 large containers with flowers and foliage plants for summer enjoyment. At this time of year, there’s a pause in the garden action. Foliage is looking shopworn and dull. A few flowering plants whose growth shut down during the hottest days are coming back to life, preparing for an autumn round of bloom. 

Phlox and a few zinnias are blooming in the late summer lull

Buds are swelling on the New England asters (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae), but few have opened yet. This seems like a good time to evaluate how the container plantings have turned out.

    My favorite pot this year was inspired by advice from reader Patricia McGinnis. Two years ago, Patricia pointed out that instead of neonicotinoid-treated annuals from the garden center, I could fill my pots with divisions of perennials from the garden. What a breakthrough!

    Last fall I’d potted some unneeded perennials with thoughts of passing them on to students at my spring sustainable gardening course (If you’d like to attend the fall course in my garden on Saturdays October 26 and November 2, you can register here through Newton Community Education). Some didn’t find a new home, so I used them to design a pot for a prominent position in the front yard.

Perennial divisions fill out a front yard container

    A purple-leaved heuchera, a nativar, makes a solid mass in this arrangement. Nonnatives provide contrasting foliage: a hosta with chartreuse leaves banded with blue-green and a Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra) with similar yellow-gold coloring. I bought an ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) to add some height and added white-flowered wax begonias to bloom nonstop through the season. The begonias' shiny round leaves add another texture to the composition. I knew the fern and begonias were neonic-free, because I’d gotten them at a local farm and garden center that promises untreated plants.

    My next favorite container plantings this summer feature nonnative combinations I’ve been repeating over the years. The “thriller” in these pots is Canna ‘Bengal Tiger’. 

Yellow-striped leaves make Canna 'Bengal Tiger' stand out

I store the roots in the basement through the winter, so I don’t have to worry about neonic-treated replacements. I do the same with the giant tuberous roots of elephant ears (Colcasia esculenta). 

Like cannas, elephant ears need their roots stored indoors in winter

The canna has orange blooms, but I usually cut off the flower stalks so top-heavy plants won’t tip over in a heavy wind. To fill in around the canna stems in a pot that’s located in shade, I added white-flowered impatiens. In two pots on the deck that get afternoon sun, I combined the cannas with cobalt-blue lobelia (Lobelia erinus). 

    This year I’ve had success with another conventional flower choice: a big pot full of apple-blossom pink geraniums. 

Taking a break on a geranium flower. Is it a cricket?

I’d bought three of these plants at a pesticide-free garden center two years ago. I’ve kept subsequent generations alive by taking cuttings in fall. This way I don’t have to search every spring for neonic-free geraniums.

    These are the adaptations that have allowed me to keep neonics out of my pollinator-friendly garden. I’m also happy that my peat-free potting mix is succeeding in providing sustenance for the container plantings.

Coleus thriving in potting mix made from compost and coconut fiber