12 Stunning Spring Container Gardens (2024)

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Spring into the new season with potted vignettes that exclaim “out with winter” and “in with buds and blooms.” Here are 12 container combinations — with pastel-petaled tulips, sunny daffodils, bright green foliage and sweet strawberries — that capture spring in all its glory.

Greenhaven Landscapes Inc.

1. Celebration of spring. Welcome the season with a sunny arrangement of mixed bulbs of various heights and delicate pansies tucked to fill in around the base. Here, a pair of deep urns planted with medium-purple tulips, yellow daffodils, pink ranunculuses, grape hyacinths (Muscari sp.), pansies and variegated English ivy makes a glorious entry arrangement.

It can be tricky to get bulbs planted in combination to bloom at the same time. To re-create this look, choose a bag of early, midseason or late-blooming bulbs packaged together and plant them in a container according to the instructions.

If you missed planting bulbs last fall, pick up potted bulbs from your local nursery and plant them together in a container. Look for ones that are just beginning to bud for a coordinated bloom time.

Water requirement: Moderate to high
Light requirement: Full sun to partial shade

2. Spring trio. Make an impact with an odd number of spring containers arranged together in a vignette. The designer of this entryway trio massed colorful pansies and nemesias in the lowest container, planted the medium container with an evergreen combination of boxwood and trailing ivy, and played up the height of the largest container with purple foxgloves (Digitalus sp.).

A clever trick to try at home: Use cut puss* willow branches stuck into the soil as an attractive support for tall bloom spikes.

Water requirement: Moderate to high
Light requirement: Full sun to partial shade

KMS Gardens and Design

3. Purple rain. Florist hydrangeas are bred to bloom on much smaller plants than shrubby garden hydrangeas, making them a perfect scale for spring containers. Buy them budding or already in bloom and combine with fragrant hyacinths (Hyacinth sp.), grape hyacinths and chartreuse stonecrop (Sedum rupestre ‘Lemon Coral’) to re-create this look. ‘Mathilda Gutges’ bigleaf hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Mathilda Gutges’) grow in this container.

After their peak, florist hydrangeas can be planted out into sunny garden beds.

Water requirement:
Moderate to high
Light requirement: Full sun to partial shade

Garden Stories

4. Miniature vignette. For a small-scale display — perfect for an elevated container where you can see the arrangement up close — plant tiny daffodils like 8-inch-tall ‘Hawera’ or ‘Baby Boomer’ in combination with pansies and hyacinths. If you’d like a bit more height, tuck in branches of puss* willow or budding forsythia.

Water requirement: Moderate to high
Light requirement: Full sun to partial shade

Le jardinet

5. Scent of spring. For a delicious fragrance when you pass over your home’s threshold, cluster potted bulbs chosen for their scent by your main entrance. Hyacinths and paperwhites (Narcissus papyraceus) are among the most fragrant and widely available.

Water requirement:
Moderate to high
Light requirement: Full sun to partial shade

Margot Hartford Photography

6. Sweet treat. Strawberries grow well in containers. The plants appreciate the slightly warmer soil temperature and good drainage (make sure your pot has a drainage hole). Plant June-bearing varieties, such as ‘Chandler’, ‘Jewel’ and exceptionally tasty ‘Sequoia’, now for a first harvest in early summer.

Water requirement: Moderate (high water dilutes berry flavor)
Light requirement: Full sun

10 Easy Edibles to Grow in Containers

Browse garden containers

Pot Incorporated

7. Pastel hues. Potted arrangements of fuss-free succulents look good now and will continue to grow all summer long with little additional care. Select a combination with a variety of colors, forms and textures, from rosette-forming echeverias to upright aeoniums and fine-textured ground cover sedums. In this container combination, a vivid purple echeveria (Echeveria ‘Perle Von Nürnberg’) is a particular standout.

Other succulents in this container include ‘Angelina’ stonecrop (Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’), aloe vera (Aloe vera), ‘Mexican Giant’ echeveria (Echeveria colorata ‘Mexican Giant’), blue chalk sticks (Senecio serpens) and ‘Velour’ aeonium (Aeonium ‘Velour’).

Water requirement: Low
Light requirement: Full sun; part shade in hot climates

J. Montgomery Designs, Inc.

8. Spring elegance. Give a quick update to potted winter evergreens by tucking cool-season annuals (like pansies and violas) or warm-season bloomers (like petunias and bacopa) around the base. Choose flowers in shades of blue, lavender, pink, lemon-yellow or pale orange for a springlike look. This container features ‘Faulkner’ littleleaf boxwood (Buxus microphylla ‘Faulkner’) and Celebration Sky Blue calibrachoa.

Water requirement:
Moderate
Light requirement: Full sun

Heidi's Lifestyle Gardens

9. Bird’s nest. No planting is required for this charming arrangement of moss, puss* willow branches and a decorative bird’s nest — available from craft stores. If you’re keeping the display indoors, mist the moss every few days to keep it green.

Water requirement: Occasional misting
Light requirement: Any light

Premier Service

10. Sunny welcome. Spring blooms with richer pastel tones have a stronger visual impact than those with paler hues that are more washed out. For an entryway display that packs a color punch, combine medium-pink tulips with golden daffodils, tangerine and sky-blue pansies, purple nemesias and variegated English ivy.

Water requirement: Moderate to high
Light requirement: Full sun to partial shade

Glenna Partridge Garden Design

11. Icy blues. Plant this beauty now and enjoy blooms all summer. Silver-leaved lavender, such as Lavandula stoechas ‘Silver Anouk’, looks fresh for spring and grows into a pale, shimmering shrub with medium-purple flowers through spring and summer. Surround a potted lavender with warm-season annuals such as calibrachoa or perennial silver-leaved spiller Silver Cascade dusty miller (Artemisia stelleriana).

Water requirement:
Moderate to high
Light requirement: Full sun

SullyScapes, LLC

12. Purple and chartreuse. Give your spring containers real pizazz with a high-contrast foliage combination of deep purple and zingy lime green. The designer of this container garden combined plum-colored carpet bugle (Ajuga reptans ‘Black Scallop’) with lime-green creeping jenny (Lysimachia nummularia ‘Goldilocks’), purple-leaved Strobilanthes, African daisies (Osteospermum ecklonis ‘Lavender Mist’), and purple and gold pansies.

Water requirement: Moderate to high
Light requirement: Full sun

Tell us: Do you have a go-to combination for your spring container gardens? Share photos in the Comments below.

More
9 Tips for Creating an Artful Container Garden
7 Great Container Plants for Early-Spring Appeal

12 Stunning Spring Container Gardens (2024)

FAQs

How many plants can you put in a 12 inch container? ›

Generally, using three or four plants in 10 to 12-inch planters, four to six plants in 14 to 16-inch planters and six to eight plants in 16 to 20-inch planters will fill out containers nicely while allowing room for the plants to grow without excessive crowding.

What container plants are good for early spring? ›

Plants like Japanese andromedas, witch hazels, forsythias, winter hazels, deutzias, camellias, winter jasmines, magnolias, and many early-blooming rhododendrons and azaleas are candidates for spring containers.

What are the best containers for container gardening? ›

Plastic or clay pots, buckets, baskets, and wooden boxes are suitable for most vegetables. Plastic tubs and garbage barrels provide space for roots of rank-growing vegetables, such as cucumbers and tomatoes.

What do you put in the bottom of a container garden? ›

One of the best things to put at the bottom of a planter for drainage is broken pieces of pot. You can use any unwanted plant pots or chipped crockery for this – simply smash them up into small to medium-sized pieces. Adding a layer of broken pieces of pot like this will prevent compost loss out of the drainage holes.

How many plants go in a 12 inch hanging basket? ›

How many plants should I put in a standard Basket? For a 12” hanging basket (not including any side panels) 6-7 plants. For a 14” hanging basket (not including any side panels) 7-8 plants. For a 16” hanging basket (not including any side panels) 8-9 plants.

What is the cheapest way to make a container garden? ›

Repurpose old, damaged or about-to-be discarded items into smart-chic containers. If the items don't have drainage holes, add some. Or keep the plants in their pots so you can easily slip them out of the container to dump excess water.

What is the first plant to come up in spring? ›

Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis)

Like other springtime bulb plants, their foliage dies back by summer. The "snow" in the name is apt because they are among the earliest bloomers in February or March. Snowdrops are sometimes spotted pushing up through a layer of snow.

What are the best vegetables for container gardening? ›

Some of the more popular container crops are salad greens, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, beans, chard, beets, radish, squash, and cucumbers. More challenging crops include melons, corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. The key is to experiment. Look for “bush” or “dwarf” varieties of the crops you want to grow.

What is the best mix for container gardening? ›

2 parts compost. 2 parts peat moss. 1 part perlite or vermiculite.

How much does a 12 inch planter hold? ›

Size of Bag and Approximate Number of Pots It Fills
Pot type & sizeApproximate soil volume of pot*(dry quarts*)64-qt bag
12 inch5.511½
14 inch8.4
16 inch12.0
18 inch18.8
26 more rows

Can you put too many plants in a planter? ›

The living plant arrangement is when you place as many plants as possible into each planter. This allows the container to look full immediately after planting. However, since living flower arrangements are crowded; they tend not to have as much longevity and often have greater disease problems.

What size is a #1 container for plants? ›

Container Sizes
Container SizeGallon SizeCubic Inches
#1 container#1 gallon173 cu. in
#2 container#2 gallon370 cu. in.
#3 container#3 gallon693 cu. in.
#5 container#5 gallon887.73 cu. in.
2 more rows

How many plants can you have in a 10x10? ›

Most cultivators utilize roughly 70% of a room's floor space as the canopy. In this scenario, a 10 x 10 room can hold up to 70 plants. Efficient facilities take advantage of tiered growing systems. Each tier increases production capabilities and can triple a room's canopy.

References

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