Architectural Plants. Christine Shaw

       ABOVE

      A well-stocked specialist nursery full of mouthwatering horticultural goodies.

      Choosing & buying

      After inspecting the garden thoroughly, reading through the plant descriptions and making a final decision about what you’d like to grow, the much more exciting task of buying the plants can proceed. There are a couple of things to think about, though, before embarking on the buying expedition. Firstly, where to buy the plants from, and secondly, what size of plants to buy.

       Specialist nurseries vs garden centres

      Specialist nurseries are great fun to visit. They stock only the plants they are interested in. There’ll be no barbecues, pot-pourri or Christmas decorations in sight – just lots and lots of lovely plants. Nurseries selling architectural plants will be visited by like-minded customers, and experiences and gardening tips can be talked about and shared. The nursery owners and staff can offer expert advice and usually have enough time and enthusiasm to assist with the selection and purchase of any plant required.

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      Some plants are much more successful in containers than others.

      The staff at nurseries will also be experienced in wrapping and packing awkward or unfamiliar plants, and can usually arrange the delivery of any large specimens that you’re unable to take home yourself. Delivery is normally expertly done by strong young chaps, who are used to dealing with weighty palm trees and giant bamboos. These plants will be delivered to your door and manoeuvred to any part of the garden, as requested.

      All in all, specialist nurseries are hard to beat and, because most of the plants are produced on site, the cost is reasonable and the full range of stock is usually available.

      However, garden centres shouldn’t be automatically dismissed. Many of them are becoming much more adventurous in the plants they stock, and increasing numbers of architectural plants can be found on their premises. Garden centres are also convenient places for buying compost, garden tools, irrigation equipment, lighting and anything else that might be required for the garden, all of which can be bought at the same time as the plants.

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      There’s a wide choice of exciting plants for growing indoors too.

       Financial constraints

      Gone are the days when everyone lived at the same address for several decades and was able to grow plants from tiny specimens until maturity. Nowadays, many of us are impatient for an ‘instant fix’, and television gardening programmes have encouraged us all to buy large plants for immediate impact. This is fine if your budget is open-ended, in which case buy the largest of everything. Most of us, though, can’t spend our hard-earned cash with such reckless abandon and need to be a bit more cautious.

      If your budget is limited, work out from your list of requirements which are the fast-growing plants and which are the slowest. If a plant is a rapid grower, putting on several feet of new growth per season, such as a Eucalyptus, then buying a smaller, cheaper plant makes sense. For plants that are tediously slow, such as palm trees, put as much money as possible into buying a decent-sized specimen. Watching a small palm put on just a few inches of growth per year is a maddeningly frustrating experience, as you know that it will be years before it flourishes enough to become a focal feature in the garden.

      One last thing to give some thought to is that some of the larger plants can be extremely heavy and quite tricky to plant. So, there is often the added expense of employing a professional team of capable gardeners to do the hard work for you. It’s a choice between parting with yet more cash or risking personal injury by doing the job yourself.

       ABOVE

      Aeonium ‘Schwarzkopf’ is a popular and easy choice for a terracotta pot.

      Plants in pots

      Growing plants in containers has always been popular, but the difficulties of cultivating plants in this way are often glossed over. Magazine articles and advertisements for conservatories and terracotta pots make it look so easy, and gardeners usually blame themselves when plants become unhealthy or die. But it cannot be overemphasized exactly how unhappy plants can become when forced to spend their lives in such an unnatural environment.

      Plants are at least a hundred times happier when planted in the ground, where they belong, than when they are planted in pots.

      The roots of plants growing in containers are far nearer the elements than they were designed for, which is tucked away snugly underground. They experience more frost, more heat from the sun and more rain, which doesn’t always drain away quickly enough. So the chances of these plants suffering from freezing, drought and rotting are far higher than if they were growing in the garden. Plant roots also like to spread out, not to be cramped in a small space, which causes the plant additional stress. A stressed plant has reduced resistance to pests and diseases. Plants in containers have to be sprayed for bugs far more often than those in the ground. Insects can detect a weakened plant a mile off and zoom in for the kill with astonishing speed.

      The most common cause of failure, however, is lack of water. Watering in the summer is something we all know has to be done, but sometimes watering twice a day in periods of extreme heat is too much of a chore. During the winter, when we assume that plants are looking after themselves more, watering is a task easily forgotten. Just because it has been raining for days on end doesn’t mean our containers are being adequately supplied with moisture. The rain can bounce straight off leafy plants without any water going directly into the pot.

      Sometimes, though, containers are unavoidable. If your garden consists of a roof terrace or balcony, then they are the only choice. Pots on either side of the front door or along a terrace are always popular, too. By choosing suitable containers and understanding why certain plants should be avoided, the whole process can be turned into a successful venture.

       Selecting suitable containers

      The traditional flower pot is a carefully chosen shape, not because of its looks, but because of its practicality. The fact that it is wide at the top, narrow at the base and has smooth straight sides means that however pot-bound a plant becomes, it can always be pulled out. This should be given serious consideration when choosing a pot for your prize specimens.

      Although there are some beautifully shaped pots on the market, containers with extravagantly curved sides should be used only as ornaments for the garden. Otherwise, when it is time for the plant to be moved into something larger, the only options are either to smash the pot or to chop off a considerable amount of the plant’s root system.

      Whether a pot is plastic, terracotta, ceramic or stainless steel, good drainage is vital. Unless there are really good-sized drainage holes drilled into the bottom, leave it in the shop – it is useless!

      Also, bear in mind that the larger the pot, the wider the choice of plants that can be grown in it successfully.

      It is interesting to remember that the French king Louis XIV had figured all this out years ago with his famous Versailles pots. They were brilliant designs that enabled plants to be kept in them for decades. Each of their four sides could be removed, which gave his gardeners access to the roots. Every year, one side only was lifted off, any dead roots were cut out and the old compost was gently tweezed out with a specially made implement – something like a small curved fork. This was replaced with fresh compost, which gave the plant a new lease of life. This meant that every four years, all sides of the plant received this treatment, which ensured that the king’s precious