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Inside The New York Botanical Garden

Archive: April 17, 2012

Container Madness

Posted in Gardening Tips on April 17 2012, by Sonia Uyterhoeven

I walked by a restaurant in my neighborhood and realized it was closing down. Large industrial-sized pots, pans, and trays were piled up on display in the window to be sold off for a bargain the next morning. My eye caught a colander in the midst. I stared longingly at the colander and sighed, knowing that I wouldn’t be around when the doors opened for the sale.

I love collecting good, sturdy cookware for my own kitchen, but my motives that night were different. The large colander would have made a perfect planting container–perhaps as a hanging basket or a round, squat container that would have added an elegant touch to an intimate terrace garden. Unlike the small ones that I buy at retail stores for draining my pasta, this industrial colander was about 16 to 18 inches in diameter. It was crying out for a collection of herbs, sedums, hens and chicks, strawberries or colorful cascading annuals. It even could have become a home to mesclun mix.

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