Baseless Pots…

 

 

As part of my garden transformation, I decided to “experiment” with baseless pots. After watching the “Bunny Guinness YouTube” channel, I couldn’t wait for the opportunity to implement this idea into some of my garden beds.

 

 

Bunny Guinness (see April 22 blog post for more information on her) has used baseless pots in many of her landscape designs.  She uses pots to reflect the style of a garden and/or disguise awkward spaces.  The pots can be made of clay (frost proof) wood, metal etc.  Cutting the bottom out of the pots, however, isn’t for the faint of heart.  In the photo (left) we see Guinness using a power saw to cut the bottom out of a large clay pot.

Using pots adds interest to garden design as well as offering an alternate option to plant greenery in areas that may not be accessible otherwise. For example, if you want to plant a tree on a concrete patio, you would cut (jack hammer) a small area out the cement where you want the pot to sit…(it would be easier if the area where you want to place a baseless pot was laid with paving stones or a gravel pad).  The roots of a tree or shrub planted in a  baseless pot will eventually find their way into the ground below the pot, allowing the tree (shrub) to happily survive in this environment for some time.

The photos below show trees and shrubs planted in baseless pots.

 

 

There are two areas in my garden where I want to use baseless pots. Below is a photo of two hybrid tea roses that I planted in fibreglass pots (my son has cut the bottoms out for me).  I have also ordered two standard hardy hydrangeas to plant in larger baseless pots in the front boxwood garden.

 

The roses I planted are “Fragrant Cloud”…

 

 

…awaiting a standard hydrangea…

I hope (I’m an optimist gardener!) that the root system of the hydrangeas and roses become well established and that they survive our harsh winter conditions…it’s another experiment…

xox Judy

Puppy update…one week old