My friend Diane is a talented container flower gardener. Her perennial “gardens” thrive and look beautiful.
She mentioned a gardening mantra “Thrillers, Fillers and Spillers” (TFS) that can be a guide for designing container gardens. In this concept every container has plants that are striking, colorful and tall, some that fill up and hide the soil and then others to spill over the sides of the pot. I had learned a slightly different version of this in my floral design classes in college. My professor called it “line, mass, form and filler.”
You have probably seen this design displayed wherever there are container gardens for sale. There’s a tall foliage plant with colorful leaves or perhaps a grass, in the center, surrounded by something like petunias and marigolds, and then, draping down the side you may see sweet potato vine or nasturtiums. Often in a TFS design plants are annuals rather than perennials. However, you may have noticed the ever-popular succulent container garden planted following the TFS design. It can also be used to construct indoor container gardens.
In looking for outdoor plants, choose those that bloom all season to have lasting pleasure. Find thrillers whose height balances the size of the container. My instructor taught that 1½ times the height of the container was the most aesthetically pleasing. Fillers and spillers can be selected not only for color, but also for texture to complement the thriller as well as the container. Be sure to plant flowers that will take the conditions where you want to put the pot. Remember how hot the sun is here and how often it’s windy. Containers need water more often than plants in the ground.
If you decide on perennial plants, you have the advantage of being able to plant them in the ground in the fall for next year. Keeping plants in outside containers alive over winter requires planning and effort. They have to be protected from freezing and thawing. They require moisture even after plants go dormant. Some people move pots into an unheated garage. Others move them to a shady location to keep them from getting warm enough to grow again after going dormant. New winter growth is easily killed by the next freeze.
Perennial thriller or form plants might include iris (which bloom only once though), black-eyed Susan or delphinium, but may also be an interesting grass such as fountain grass. A prolific perennial filler is candytuft while snow-in-summer is a successful spiller.
Have fun with your container gardens!
JoAnne Skelly is associate professor & extension educator emerita at the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension.
