Verbena is an old-fashioned cottage garden plant that is making something of a comeback. It is really a perennial but is best treated as an annual; the new hybrids have dense heads of pink, white and purple flowers that still retain their scent. Take out the growing shoots to encourage bushiness and dead-head regularly. Verbena is usually sold in boxes of mixed colours and these mixtures are particularly attractive. It reaches a height of up to 10 inches.
Gazania is another perennial most commonly grown as an annual. G. x hybrida at 9 inches has dark green foliage with a grey underside; the daisy flowers are in the yellow, orange, bronze range though you can also have some deep pinks. They like full sun.
Marigolds—the nurseries call them calendula to distinguish them from French and African marigolds—have been bred to produce showier and showier doubles in colours from vivid orange to almost lemon. Against a white-painted wall the subtle range of colours looks superb—most seeds and boxes are sold as mixed varieties and this mixing enhances their appearances. Marigolds need nipping out to keep them bushy and regular dead-heading, and that’s about all.
What else can we plant in a summer box? The answer is: whatever you can find that meets the twin requirements of low growth and sturdy habit. Don’t be put off by the man in the garden centre who won’t recommend a plant for window boxes because he has never seen it grown that way. He is being, at least, honest but not very adventurous.
You may make a mistake or simply be sold a box of plants that does not perform as it is supposed to: nicotiana, perhaps, that come up 4 feet tall and plunge the sitting room into gloom, or nasturtiums that don’t seem to have read the stuff on the seed packet about being a riot of flower all summer and produce nothing but a riot of leaves. If something goes wrong, throw it out and start again. Garden centres are full of quick-growing annuals from too early in the spring—late May is the earliest you should be planting many annuals and even then you can be taking a chance—until late summer. As the season progresses, the plants in boxes become starved and it is only the desperate who will buy them. But as well as these boxes there are usually individually rooted plants, things like petunias, gazanias, dianthus and all the different marigolds. These can seem scandalously expensive to anyone who knows you can get hundreds from a small packet of seeds. But you are buying the grower’s time as well as the seedling, so grit your teeth and buy a few to fill in gaps or replace earlier failures. Once settled into a new home, with more space to spread themselves plus regular feeding, these individually raised plants will usually romp away and quite take your mind off their original price.
It is axiomatic that, once you have bought plants for your box or boxes, you will have some left over. As a tender-hearted soul you will hate the thought of discarding perfectly healthy plants so the chances are you will hunt around for a pot or even another box in which to plant them. Then you have to buy a few more to fill it up, and have some more left over…. Summer is the time when you can indulge this proliferation of boxes and pots and it is surprising how many different containers can be pressed into service to take odd plants. Old catering-size tins or plastic ice-cream or fridge boxes can have holes made in their bases and be used, perhaps only for one season, to provide extra splashes of colour around the house. Otherwise, use simple clay, not plastic, pots but be prepared to water them often.
If you have space at ground level you can extend your range of plants to take in some of the taller perennials. Stand their boxes against a wall and provide support for the growing stems and you can have even giants like hollyhocks or sunflowers to create interest at a higher level. Climbers can be grown in containers. Clematis, particularly, like to get their heads right up in the sun but need shade at their roots and I have seen them flourishing at first-floor window height when their roots were in a box in the deep shade of a basement area.
The many species clematis and the more familiar hybrids such as our old friend ‘Nellie Moser’ are worth a book in themselves, and indeed there are many that will give meticulous descriptions and full details on how to grow and prune each single variety.
You should always ask for advice on pruning when you buy a clematis. As a general rule you prune the species clematis only when you need to restrict their growth and this is simply a matter of cutting out old and weak growth and shortening remaining shoots by up to two-thirds. The correct time for pruning summer and autumn flowering species is the following February or March; those that bloom in the spring or early summer you do immediately after flowering.
The magnificent hybrids, those that flower from the end of May until July, should be encouraged to make bushy growth low down rather than a bird’s nest mass high up on thin spindly shoots. Usually all shoots are cut back to within 9 inches of the ground during the second spring after planting. After that it is a question of tidying up weak or dead wood and tying in young growth to trellis or training wires. The clematis that flower from July onwards can be encouraged to spread outwards rather than upwards by judicious tying in of shoots along horizontal wires; the flowers will grow upwards from these. Pruning the following spring means cutting back all this growth to a pair of plump buds near the base of these vertical shoots, and removing weak or dead wood. Clematis enthusiasts will tell you that there is hardly a month in the year when you cannot have a clematis in bloom. Certainly you can see C. alpina’s lilac bell flowers nodding away in April, while many of the large-flowered hybrids start in May or June and keep going until October. Clematis like limey soil, though this is not essential; a good plan is to incorporate crushed mortar rubble or chalk in the compost in the pot. What is essential is shade for the roots, and usually this is best arranged by planting something low-growing just in front of your clematis.
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