Picture Perfect Cooking

For today’s Thoughtful Thursday post, I thought I would share a little tutorial on how I create the flower pots that decorate our home during the summer.  I love to garden and I come from a long line of flower lovers!  My nanny (maternal grandmother) has many flowers around her house and geraniums are one of her favorites.  It seems that she has passed that love down to me because I always use them in my pot designs. 

We have red metal chairs on our front porch so I usually do a red, white, and blue theme for the pots on that.  For the deck pots in the back of the house, I decided to go a bit bolder by using hot pink, purple and white.

This year I purchased Rocky Mountain Violet and Rocky Mountain Dark Red zonal geraniums as the base plants with the following as my fillers:  For impact in the back of the pots, I used spikes in all of the containers.  For the front porch, I also used Mealycup Sage (Salvia) in Sallyfun Blue; and for the back porch, I used Angelonia (Summer Snapdragon) Alonia White.  To fill in the sides, I used Diamond Frost in all of the pots.  I still needed something that would drape over the front so I chose Scaevola (Fan Flower) Bombay Dark Blue for the front and Calibrachoa Callie Dark Blue for the back.

To make the pots easier to move around, I used a trick my mom taught me.  Fill the pots about halfway with pieces of Styrofoam and then add the potting soil.  It works like a charm every time!

Now it is time to add the soil.  Fill up the pot to about 3 or 4 inches of the top and then “dry fit” the plants to your satisfaction.

Once the flowers are placed where you want them, fill in around the root balls with potting soil and gently press everything together.  Place your pots in their location and water well.  I try to water these every day and fertilize at least once a week, if not twice.