The Summer Window Box

One of my favorite sites is Artie's blog, Color Outside the Lines. I eagerly await each new post and was thrilled when he announced that he would host "Share a Garden Sunday".

Some of Linderhof's garden will be shared and if you want to see what other gardeners are doing, go to Artie's Color Outside the Lines for some great garden ideas. Gardeners love to share!

I have always felt that I was pot and box challenged. I would go to a garden center and get a flat and put plants in and try to arrange and rearrange and thinking that I got a good combination, would look at it again and then buy my usual begonias and geraniums and go home and put them in the pots and boxes. They were colorful but boring!

Until . . . . I took a class at my favorite city garden center, Red Cedar Gardens. Ricki opened my eyes as far as what to put where. She doesn't follow the "thrill, spill and fill" theory but rather picks plants that go well together colorwise and if some "thrill" (upright) or "spill" (creeping) or "fill" that's okay. But it doesn't need to be. And she doesn't use bedding plants only to fill pots and boxes -- perennials, herbs, ferns are all great.

I felt as if a cloud had been lifted and I saw pots and boxes in a whole new light. Not that each and every box has to be a mixture of different plants. A mass of one plant makes a statement and that's okay, too.

The window box at Linderhof is not directly attached to a window -- but it is under one. The supports for the box were there when we bought the house and a shelf was on top. We put pots of geraniums there but it was very hot and the plants needed a lot of watering.

So we had the box built.

In spring (and sometimes in fall), we plant pansies. They are a harbinger of spring and we like to see their gay smiling faces each day.

To add interest to the box which is very long, we added a small St. Francis.

But alas, always in June and sometimes in May, heat comes to the prairie and we lose the pansies.

Then we plant the box for summer . . . .

And until this year, it was usually petunias or begonias or geraniums . . .

But this year, I went to the garden center and came home with two boxes of plants.
Three purple fountain grass, two optic fiber grass, some coraly pink hyssop that smells divine and some of the little pink calibrocha (or million bells)
We added a piece of iron for interest and love how both the hyssop and million bells pick up the pinky brick color.
The purple of the fountain grass is a nice accent against the brick and makes the green of the blooming plants seem more green.
This box is so much better than a box of petunias (or begonias or geraniums). It has texture and interest and a wonderful heady fragrance. And some interest with St. Francis and the piece of iron.

In a month or so, it should be full and lush and I can hardly wait.