Hanging baskets not only add charm to your home, but happy pops of color too, and June is the month to plant them.
They also work well in small spaces and for confined gardens, offering more growing space, just dot them around the exterior, or to create an entrance, add a couple on either side of your porch. What’s more, they can be completely tailored to the color scheme of your choice and can be as intricate as you wish, providing an opportunity to take your flower display to another level. Go extravagant with vibrancy and plenty of cascading bedding plants, or pair it back depending on your desired look.
Annelise Brilli of Dobies shares her expert tips, from choosing your baskets to planting, and her ‘thriller, filler, spiller’ method.
Choose your hanging basket with practicality in mind
Hanging baskets are high maintenance as they require regular watering and inadequate watering is the most common cause of poor displays. Consider this when choosing your basket type – the prettiest baskets are not always the most practical – and so could end up looking like a mess by midsummer!
Rattan, cone-shaped baskets look charming but do not provide adequate root space for plants. Traditional wrought iron baskets are immediately attractive and last forever – but they will dry out much more quickly than plastic baskets, you must use a liner and they are fiddlier to plant up. Always choose coir liners over sphagnum moss – which may come from unsustainable sources.
Although plastic baskets may initially look unappealing, they will quickly be camouflaged by trailing plants especially if you choose a design with holes in the sides. Plastic baskets with built-in reservoirs are a great way to save on water, fertilizer, and time. They will help to keep the compost consistently moist, avoiding the awkward task of trying to re-wet a completely dried-up basket. Always choose the largest basket available – it will retain more moisture and give a fuller display.
Plant up early
If you have a greenhouse, plant up your hanging baskets in April and leave them in the greenhouse before hanging them out after all risk of frost has passed in May. Plants will be well established by the time you put them outside, giving you a fuller display for longer.
Incorporate slow-release fertilizer when you plant up your baskets
Hanging baskets demand plenty of feeding. The plants only have a small amount of compost from which to draw nutrients and continual watering rapidly leaches them out. Avoid relying on liquid feeds as most of it will end up draining out onto the floor. Instead, incorporate a slow-release fertilizer into the compost at the time of planting. Baskets may still run out of fertilizer by the end of the summer, in which case you can top-up with liquid fertilizer, but always water them well first.
Fill with a good quality compost
Use a good quality peat-free compost that isn’t too heavy and leave an inch or two of space at the top. If you overfill the compost when planting, it will swell up the sides even more when moist and make watering tricky. Some composts come with water-retaining granules already added, however, most of these are man-made polymers with unknown effects on the environment. If you do want to use water-retaining granules, select organic ones made from natural seaweed.
Use enough plants but not too many!
There is no magic number for how many plants but as a rough guide, for the top of a 12–14-inch basket, use 3 to 5, 9cm plants. For a 16–18-inch basket use about 5-7. Add extra plants for the sides if wanted.
Don’t cram in so many plants that there is no room for growth. The basket will quickly become root and the plants will deteriorate before the end of the summer.
Don’t make your plant selection too complicated
A maximum of three different types of plants is plenty and even arrangements with a single variety can look stunning. The same goes for colors.
The formula ‘thriller, filler, spiller’ is often cited as the rule, with ‘thrillers’ being centerpiece plants, fillers foliage, or low-key flowering plants and spillers the trailing plants that tumble over the sides. However, this rule applies more to large containers than hanging baskets. With baskets, it is normally trailing plants that dominate.
