Window box plant ideas: pot hardy plants to take your windows through from winter to spring with a colourful garden

Prepare your pots and window boxes for a super-chic spring with a minimal, magical colour mix.
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Alex Mitchell8 February 2019

As we head into winter’s final strait, there’s no better way to banish the blues than by planting up a few colourful pots or window boxes.

But how do you ensure that your combinations have the required dazzle factor and, most importantly, will last longer than a week or two?

If anyone knows the secrets to spectacular container displays it’s Alasdair Cameron whose company, Cameron Landscapes and Gardens, masterminds the planting for some of the capital’s most exclusive restaurants, clubs and hotels, from Annabel’s to The Bloomsbury and 33 of The Ivy Collection restaurants.

Expectations are high. "Everything has to look perfect," he explains, with site visits two to three times a week and a planting designer assigned to each establishment.

But whether you’re planting up antique urns in an exclusive restaurant garden or a few pots on your window ledge, says Cameron, the principles are just the same.

Here are his eight top tips for winter wonderful pots. Plant now for joyful colour to take you into spring.

Alasdair's top tips

Buy potted bulbs for colour now

If you didn’t get your bulbs in last autumn, no matter. Now’s a great time to buy potted daffodils, tulips, muscari, lily of the valley, snowdrops and hyacinths already sprouted and ready to plant.

Now's a great time to buy potted plants already sprouted and ready to plant
James Karr

If your garden centre doesn’t stock snowdrops "in the green" source them from Peter Nyssen.

When they have finished flowering, plant the bulbs out in the garden so they can spread and re-emerge next year.

Plant en masse

We do a lot en masse — I don’t like mixing too much. So we might have a pot of helleborus niger, then another full of hyacinths.

A mass planting of a single flower such as primula, muscari, hellebores or tulips, always makes more impact than a dog’s dinner of different plants.

In window boxes keep combinations fairly limited. Hyacinths, muscari and bun moss work really well together, for example, or white pansies with helleborus niger. When the hellebore flowers go over, the pansies take over.

Be a collector

Build up a really good collection of pots that go well together, as you might with porcelain or china. You can plant cheap terracotta pots with tumbling ivy to screen them but celebrate your smart pots by leaving the sides clear.

Add evergreen

It’s really important to include evergreen plants in winter containers before you fill in your florals. We use euphorbia characias Humpty Dumpty which will go right through to spring as well as ivy, multi-stem buxus, ilex, yew or evergreen herbs like a standard rosemary, sage or thyme.

Alternatively, make some of your pots entirely evergreen with a single skimmia Kew Green or large hebe Sutherlandii and mix these in among non-evergreen pots to add that essential framework.

Dress for success

Our containers have to look perfect and we find dressing the top with humpy dumpy bun moss — also known as cushion moss — gives a really smart finish.

You can get it from any florist (or online from trianglenursery.co.uk, £11.17 per punnet plus delivery).

Also think of your "skirts". We use Muehlenbeckia complexa a lot on its own to underplant trees in big pots. It makes this lovely fuzzy haircut effect.

Alasdair Cameron loves using the delicate pink tulip Mariette
James Karr

Similarly, a box ball needs a bit of a tumble of ivy around it over winter. In summer, you could replace the ivy with pale pink geranium Ville de Dresden.

Shady pots are hot

Ferns, such as polystichum, are very good for filling a shady corner. A great combination to plant now for shade is lily of the valley, helleborus niger, muscari, white crocus and white hyacinths all mixed together.

Or try brunnera Jack Frost and epimediums. A window box of ferns and snowdrops works beautifully.

Cram them in

Never worry about planting annuals quite closely because they have space to grow down into the compost. For a decent display of tulips you need about 30 in an average pot - any less looks weird.

I leave the surface of the compost in my tulip pots bare, because when they shoot up they push everything up like a cork out of a bottle.

Rotate your pots

White and blue muscari with pink hyacinths
James Karr

To have a constant display of flowers throughout the year, have two identical containers and bung one down the end of the garden or in an unobtrusive spot when it’s out of season.

Make one your summer-flowering pot full of hydrangeas, for example, and then replace it every winter with one of hellebores, ivy and lily of the valley.

To commission Cameron Landscapes & Gardens, contact camerongardens.co.uk