Take the Garden to New Heights
Regardless of your home's size, style, or neighborhood vibe, there are few houses that wouldn’t be complemented by a window box. Unlike a container planter on the porch or a hanging basket, a window box is an extension of your home, an accessory that marries living plant material to your architecture. Flowers are the central feature of the window box for most gardeners, and if your home’s façade is sunny, you have a large range of blooming choices with which to create a seasonal display. Whether you prefer a substantial wooden trough or a series of hayrack planters, your sunny window box will draw admiration from family and neighbors throughout the growing season.
Trailing Flowers
A window box gives gardeners the opportunity to make ample use of delicate trailing flowers that might succumb to mud splatters and insect pests on the ground. While petunias will always be popular, explore unusual trailing flowers like the tropical red chenille plant shown here.
Other trailing flowers that will spill handsomely over the edges of your sunny window box planter include trailing ivy-leafed pelargoniums, black-eyed Susan vine, and euphorbia 'Diamond Frost.' Intersperse your Other trailing flowers that will spill handsomely over the edges of your sunny window box planter include trailing ivy-leafed pelargoniums, black-eyed Susan vine, and euphorbia 'Diamond Frost.' Intersperse your trailing flowers with trailing foliage plants like sweet potato vine or creeping Jenny for textural interest.
City Flower Garden
With the help of a window box exploding with flowers and trailing plants, even an urban garden with no bare soil can be transformed into a stare-worthy garden. To achieve this densely planted look, choose a moss lined wire window box or hayrack planter, and plant top, sides, and bottom with closely spaced pelargoniums. Add a few licorice plants at the bottom for foliage interest.
Secrets of Good Container Design all design of gardening goes with these designs elements
Pink and Blue Window Box
Try a window box is a triumph of color, texture, and form. Chartreuse sweet potato vine and the spiky purple foliage of false red dracaena ensure visual interest even when the flowers of blue lobelia and yellow million bells are between blooming cycles. The pink leaves of showy perilla plants are coleus look-alikes, but are much more vigorous and sun-loving.
When the gardening season winds down, don’t let your window box display end with a whimper. Rip out tired summer annuals and replace with autumn flowers, like these mums. You could use gourds and ornamental kale as filler like this gardener did, or create a densely blossomed look with other mums and asters.
Window Box Care
The prominent position of a window box makes it important to give the flowers a bit of extra TLC. Some flowers, like vinca and profusion zinnias, need little or no deadheading, but petunias always look better with a weekly snipping to remove spent blossoms and to maintain a compact plant. You should also fertilize every other week, and remove yellowing or dead foliage as needed.
Hay Rack Planters never heard them called this...interesting. I have some I am going to try.
You may have thought you'd never say the “M” word again if snails and pill bugs make Swiss cheese out of your marigolds year after year, but growing these easy plants away from the ground level will give you a new appreciation for this classic bedding plant. A trio of hayrack planters adds elegance to the monochromatic planting, and provides excellent drainage as well.
Nasturtium Flower Box
If you’ve hesitated to start flowers from seed in the past, try direct seeding with a flower that resents transplanting, like the forgiving nasturtium. The large seeds are easy to work with, and some varieties sport bluish (‘Empress of India’) or variegated (‘Alaska’ mix) foliage. As the flowers appear, you won’t be able to resist cracking the window to take a few blossoms for a peppery salad addition, or for a small nosegay bouquet.
Food for thought, always get ideas when I do this blog.
taken from https://www.thespruce.com/window-box-flowers-for-sun-
till next time this is Becky Litterer from Becky's Greenhouse, Dougherty, Iowa