Container Gardening

Best Shrubs for Container Gardening

By Marianne Binetti

You don’t need a large landscape or even a plot of ground to enjoy growing shrubs. A balcony, deck, or porch provide enough space to put shrubs in tubs for year-round color. As an added bonus, these shrubs will thrive for years in the same pot without repotting.

The secret to success: a large pot with good drainage, quality potting soil, and slow release plant food.

The size of the container should be a few inches wider than the pot the shrub was growing in at the nursery and at least 18 inches deep. Use potting soil to ensure good drainage. Because the roots of the shrub won’t be able to spread out in search of food or water, I rely on a slow release plant food like Osmocote. Each spring all my potted shrubs get their annual meal when I work the fertilizer into the top inch of potting soil.

Best Shrubs for Tubs

Tall, dark and handsome

Get formal with a tall shrub in a tall pot.

Arborvitae Thuja:

These tough and hardy evergreens are often used for hedging but when grown in a large container you can enjoy a column of evergreen structure that can be moved around the garden. I potted a pair of Thuja in matching lightweight foam pots (I spray paint these pots black every few years to keep them looking shiny and new) and these potted shrubs are lightweight enough to move about the garden. Sometimes they flank the driveway, sometimes they mark the entry of a pathway, or in winter I’ll plunk them into a planting bed just to fill up the empty space of my dormant perennial garden.

For added color I have added the dark purple foliage of heucheras ‘Plum Passion’ and the golden leaves of the groundcover lamium. Dark black spikes of Black mondo grass poke up through the other low growing plants and all of these companion plants are evergreen in the winter months – providing color year round at the foot of my handsome arborvitae.

Ilex ‘Sky Pencil’:

I adore this tall and skinny form of Japanese Holly (Ilex) because it can be tucked into small spaces and never needs pruning to keep its columnar shape. All the Ilex varieties do well in containers but the narrow growing form of ‘Sky Pencil’ is the most dramatic, especially when used in taller containers. Pot the Sky Pencil into a cube-like, rectangular pot and you’ll have a dramatic exclamation point for the garden. As a bonus a tall container makes this skinny shrub instantly taller – and as elegant and fashionable as a six foot runway model.

Yews (Taxus):

If you are looking for a shrub that will survive in a shaded site than you need a yew. There are several yews that grow in a tall and narrow form such as the Hick’s yew (Taxus media ‘Hickii’), and no other evergreen shrub can take shearing and trimming like the yews. If topiary shapes are your thing, yews got it.

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