Autumn gardening - Winter Containers

Summer baskets and tubs are the easiest thing in the world to create, but many people shy away from putting together winter containers. This is a great shame, because it's the time of year when we most need both colour and form in the garden.

First of all, think about the nature of your container. If you are going to use a wooden one, line it with plastic to stop the wood rotting. Fibreglass and plastic containers do not give delicate roots as much frost protection as a wooden container, although you can line them with bubble wrap to help insulate the roots and terracotta containers, must be labelled 'frostproof' if they are not to crack in two in the coldest days of the year. Always lift the container off the ground with pot feet or wooden runners to allow drainage.

Next think about contents - flowers are colourful but many of them suffer frost damage - giving them some shelter by using tougher, taller foliage plants is a good idea and then if they do get frost blight, you still have evergreen plants to maintain the beauty of the container. Because plants grow more slowly in the winter, they can be set much closer together in the container than summer plants, but you still need to remember to put larger plants at the back.

Ideal plants include winter pansies along with winter-blooming heathers and cyclamen for the front of a container, married to dwarf conifers and small shrubs especially those with berries like skimmia or gaultheria.

Although you can plant a container-grown tree at any time of year, autumn is without doubt the best season. The soil is still warm after the summer, yet still moist from the autumn rains so that new roots will grow quickly to settle the tree into the ground or pot. Try a bay tree, a standard holly or a rose that will have glossy winter leaves and scented summer flowers.

Winter container photograph by kevinzim, used under a creative commons attribution licence