Conservatory Container Garden Rich in Design, Edibles
Posted in Exhibitions, The Edible Garden on August 13 2010, by Plant Talk
Anything Goes—and Grows—in Potting Up Vegetables for Small Spaces
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Francisca Coelho is the Vivian and Edward Merrin Associate Vice President for Glasshouses and Exhibitions. |
You may not be aware of this, but every plant you have grown in a pot, box, can, tub, or other vessel is an example of container gardening. Your potted houseplants, summer pots of annuals, and hanging baskets all represent gardening in containers. In the tropics where I grew up, people lined their front steps with many colorful, painted containers of every shape and size. They filled them with beautiful, tropical, flowering exotics and with plants used for food and medicine. Versatility is the hallmark of the container gardener!
In front of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, as part of The Edible Garden, I am growing an assortment of tasty vegetables in containers. The design is simple-a mix of semicircles and straight lines with pots ranging in size from 14 to 36 inches in diameter.
The steps leading up to the elevated area are lined with pots filled with Tumbling Tom tomatoes, mammoth red cabbages, purple kohlrabi and kale, ornamental trailing sweet potato vines, and marigolds, included to ward off unwelcomed pests and to encourage hungry bees to pollinate my edible delights.