Cottage garden style: Create a charming cottage garden feel with a mix of pastel-colored flowers such as daisies, snapdragons, and delphiniums. Add greenery like ferns or hostas for a natural look. Deadhead flowers regularly to encourage more - it's up to you to decide whether to leave the last blooms on the plants overwinter. Hygiene & Diseases On the downside, impatiens are susceptible to downy mildew, a fungal disease that can cause the leaves to turn yellow and the plant to die off. To prevent this, it’s important to space out the plants in the window box to encourage good air circulation, avoid overhead watering, and remove any infected plants as soon as possible. 2. Coleus (Plectranthus scutellarioides) Creating a beautiful window box flower arrangement requires planning. You must consider a few key factors, including the sunlight needs, height and texture, color scheme, soil, watering needs, fertilization, and maintenance. Here are some tips to help you create the best window box flower arrangement: The various shades of lavender are well-suited to a display with a gradation of colour from light to dark. Don’t place the plants right next to each other - lavender must be able to breathe a bit. Reinforce the plant's summery French feel with image material and terracotta pots, and show what lavender can do in the limited space of a balcony with a bistro set. Combining the plant with items such as lavender soap, lavender salt and lavender oil can boost sales.

Use good quality soil: Use a high-quality, well-draining, and nutrient-rich soil mix. Fill your window box with soil within 1-2 inches of the top. Herbs are plants grown for culinary, medicinal, or aromatic purposes. Many herbs are well-suited for growing in a window garden because they don’t require a lot of space and can thrive in containers. Additionally, certain herbs like basil are natural repellants for pests such as mosquitoes. The recent warm, dry weather has been wonderful for roses, encouraging them to bloom profusely over the last number of weeks. To prolong their flowering as well as to encourage a second later flush of blooms, it’s important to keep deadheading any faded flowers. Always wear garden gloves and long sleeves when deadheading roses to protect your hands and arms from their sharp thorns and use a sharp, clean secateurs to help prevent disease entering the plants through the pruning cut. For the same reason, it’s also best to carry out deadheading on a dry, sunny day. For window boxes and other containers, start with the smallest plants, which come in P9 pots and are a year old. If you plant them outside, do it from the end of May when the soil is nice and warm. They are the cheapest way to start a lavender hedge, but you will have to wait a year or two longer for them to knit together.Lavender hydrolat can be added to linen water, adding fragrance to newly laundered sheets etc, lavender bags add fragrance to wardrobes and drawers and help keep moths away as well as adding a fabulous fragrance to clothes! The lavender plant tolerated drought well, so it is great for window boxes that may not receive regular watering. In fact, it is essential to avoid overwatering lavender, as it can be sensitive to root rot if the soil gets waterlogged. Lavender plants require 12 inches of space, full sun, and plenty of water every 14 days to grow. English lavenders (Lavandula angustifolia) are my personal favorite lavender plant to grow in pots because they are fragrant and hardy. Lavenders from both French and Spanish varieties are excellent choices for pots. Ceramic, clay, or terracotta pots are the best pots for growing lavender because they are less prone to heat than plastic and metal pots. They can also be used to protect lavender’s cold sensitive roots, which are more prone to freezing. A pot or container measuring 12 inches across and with a depth of equal or greater depth should be chosen. If lavender is watered too frequently, the potting soil becomes moist at the top, causing the roots to grow toward the surface.

Finally, choose the window box(es) that suit the look you're going for and your needs too. Window boxes themselves come in a wide variety of finishes, but are typically elongated rather than round, to fit onto windowsills.As a general rule, matching, rectangular-shaped troughs create a more formal look, and oval-shaped troughs or mismatched window boxes gives a more relaxed look.Remember too that DIYing your own is a great way to add character to all types of small space. Examples of common perennial plants for window boxes include dwarf evergreens, such as dwarf Alberta spruce or boxwood, stonecrop (sedum), coral bells (heuchera), hostas, creeping jenny (lysimachia), geraniums, and daylilies. Trailing plants Zinnias are pretty easy to grow, need minimal maintenance, and tolerate dry conditions well. The long stems of zinnias make them ideal for cutting, and the blooms will continue to open and look beautiful in a window box for several days. There are many zinnia varieties, including Orange Sprite, Gold Braid, and Irish Eyes. 8. Begonia (Begonia) Lavender requires damp soil but dry leaves. The plants should not be placed together for too long because they are prone to botrytis.Examples of succulents for window boxes include cacti, aloe, echeveria, jade plants, snake plants, and agave. Herbs Lavandula angustifolia, also called True Lavender or Common Lavender has long been cultivated for its high-quality lavender oil. Cultivars of this species tend to be compact in habit and have grayish-green narrow leaves and relatively short compact flower spikes. Flowering typically occurs from late spring to midsummer. Small-growing Lavender cultivars are ideally suited for containers as they keep a reasonably compact and small form naturally. Larger Lavender varieties can also be grown in containers, but they will need to be either transplanted to the garden after a couple of years or planted in a larger container. Pansies are one of the first flowers to bloom in the spring, so they will add color to your window boxes when other plants are still dormant. These plants are cold-tolerant and can survive a light frost, making them a good choice for early and late-season window boxes.

I recently made the mistake of smugly pointing out to an old, non-gardening friend of mine that her summer window box could, with just a little TLC, be a thing of beauty rather than an affront to the eyes. “Right. Thanks for that,” she replied tartly, fixing me with a steely glance. “So here’s an idea. How about clambering down off that horticultural high horse of yours and instead helpfully suggesting what I could plant in it that would be (a) easy to grow (b) easy on the eyes (c) nice to eat, and last but definitely not least, capable of putting up with a certain amount of wilful neglect?” Coleus is a lovely choice for window boxes due to its colorful and unique foliage. Unlike most flowering plants, coleus is grown for its leaves rather than its blooms. The leaves often have interesting patterns and textures.After planting, finish off by giving your window box a really good watering and then mulch the surface of the compost with a shallow layer of fine horticultural grit to preserve moisture. I’m very tempted to add that after all that, it’s just a simple matter of giving your window-box some occasional TLC. But then again, my non-gardening friend might be reading this . . . This week in the garden Caring for a window box with celosia is quite easy, as it requires little pruning and deadheading. The plant is drought-tolerant once established, but it benefits from regular watering during periods of dry weather. Regular fertilization encourages healthy growth and blooming. Lavender is a favorite option for window boxes, thanks to its wonderful purple tones and soothing, relaxing fragrance that can reduce stress and anxiety. It is an excellent choice for busy urban settings. Soil: Slightly acidic to neutral (6-7 pH), well-drained, rich organic matter, constantly moist but not waterlogged The pale, silvery,evergreenfoliage reflects the light joyously throughout the year; the flowers are really a bonus. Left to itself, it forms a rounded muffin-shaped bush that adds structure to the front of a herbaceous bed, softening the boundary with a lawn or path, and it can be clipped beautifully into simple geometric shapes.

What could be more delightful than a big pot of lavender in full bloom, set next to a doorway, greeting all passersby with its heavenly fragrance and colorful blossoms? Lavender (Lavandula) is a very attractive perennial that enjoys a long flowering season and is fairly easy to grow. Since not all lavenders are hardy, containers provide the opportunity to grow Lavender that would otherwise not be suited to your garden. Place them in a sunny spot (at least 6 hours of sunshine per day), provide the right soil and plenty of drainage, and your Lavender will happily blossom and grow! Begonias are often used for window boxes due to their bright, colorful blooms and versatile size, from compact to trailing. They grow anywhere from 8 inches to 2 feet tall, depending on the cultivar. There are many begonia varieties, such as wax begonias, angel wing begonias, beef steak begonias, tuberous-rooted begonias, and rex begonias. There are five types of plants to grow in a window box: annuals, perennials, trailing plants, succulents, and herbs. This section describes each type and gives suitable examples for window boxes. Annuals Lavender is a member of the mint family, and particularly grows in countries around the Mediterranean, although the plant can also do well in the cooler regions of Central and Northern Europe. Shade garden: Create a cool, shady retreat with shade-loving plants such as impatiens, ferns, and hostas. Add texture with variegated foliage or trailing plants like ivy.Because lavender plants can grow to the size of a small shrub, a large pot will allow for this growth. You should shop for containers with 12-16 inch sizes.