My Favorite Container - July

I love this container--it makes me wonder if I should "throw things together" more often, because it looks a whole lot better than most of my planned ones! I love the way the humble terracotta pot sets off the surprisingly sophisticated mix of foliage, too. Maybe I should just tell people that this one turned out exactly as I planned... who's going to know any different?

This container has a twin, and together they stand sentinel beside my side door. It's the entrance that I use 99% of the time, so I get to see these beauties on a daily basis. Here's what I have planted in each pot:

- One of the two bay laurels that outgrew their little 6in. pots in my kitchen this winter

- Three wintersown "Lady" lavender that had no space ready for them in the garden

- One salvia lyrata "Purple Knockout" from an impulse Bluestone Perennials purchase

- One of the two plants (barely visible at the base of the bay) that I got from a single pot when I decided to splurge and buy black mondo grass at my local garden center

- One dichondra "Silver Falls" that I found at a Home Depot, of all places, after looking for two weeks at smaller specialty garden centers

I originally put my carex buchannii (reddish/brown sedge, smaller picture) in this container, too, but moved it out to add a little color to the "Vodka" begonias I put in the huge urn planter that I got for my boyfriend. That's okay, though. Being able to mix reddish brown into that planter would probably have sent me over the edge of garden ecstasy anyway.

Part of what is so appealing about this container is its fleetingness, by the way, and not just because the dichondra is an annual. The salvia, lavender and black mondo grass will have to be planted out this fall and will be too large to share a container next year. I don't have room for this big pot inside so I'm going to have to repot the bay laurel into a smaller planter as well.

So I am already planning what to do as an encore... although maybe I'd be better off just waiting until the spring and winging it!