Container Gardening

Window Boxes That Wow!

By Nina Koziol

A Window to the Past

Gardeners have enjoyed window boxes since the Victorian era. Ready-to-build kit houses, such as those sold by Sears, often featured the window boxes already attached to the exterior walls when the kits arrived. In the 1920s, popular architectural plans for Cape Cod-style houses, Tudors, Dutch Colonials, bungalows, Arts and Crafts-style houses and many others featured window boxes overflowing with flowers. It was a clever marketing tool to attract buyers who saw the homes as charming and inviting.

More than a century ago, architect Gustav Stickley wrote about one of his bungalow designs, stating, “These flower-boxes at the sunroom windows bring the garden and house into such intimate companionship that one hardly knows where one leaves off and the other begins.”

Many of Chicago’s brick bungalows, built in the 1920’s, had brackets and window boxes made of concrete to match the windowsills. The concrete boxes had decorative scrolls, but many are long gone having cracked and crumbled in the last century.

window box

Photo by Nina Koziol

Window Box Materials

You can buy window boxes made from wood (rot-resistant cedar), vinyl, plastic, stone, and metal. Some window boxes have built-in water reservoirs. The choice, style and color of the box should be in keeping with the architectural style of your house. If resources allow, buy well-constructed window boxes that will be long-lasting and won’t chip or split where winter temperatures are extreme.

Unlike metal, wood and other materials stay cooler, a consideration if the box faces south or west. Wood will require staining or painting every few years. In cold climates, thin plastic window boxes may crack.

Choose sturdy brackets that can be anchored to the house.To prevent the box from falling off the brackets, you may need to secure the box directly to the house as well. If you plan to paint the box, look at the color of your house, the front door, window sash and trim for ideas. Or, pick an accent color. Paint suppliers, such as Rustoleum, offer paints for wood, metal and plastic in a wide range of colors. Some artistic gardeners stencil designs on the front and sides of the box.

Size Matters

As a general rule, the box should be about the same width as the window. Deeper boxes are better than inexpensive shallow types. Not only will a shallow window box need watering more often, it may look rather puny.

Before you buy, take a large piece of cardboard or poster board and cut out a few sizes and tape them under your windows. Step back to the front walk or side yard and see how they look.

Window-box liners made from plastic or metal can protect the exterior box. They’re available at garden centers, big-box stores and online. Liners protect wood from wet potting mix, which can cause wood to deteriorate over time.

When you attach the box, leave a little space between it and the exterior wall so that water may drain away from the house. You don’t want to drain water onto the wall below or trap moisture behind the box. In our window box, we drilled holes under the front-facing panel of the box so that the water drains a foot away from the exterior wall.

window box

Photo by Nina Koziol

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