Get Lush Greenery In Every Season By Making An Evergreen Shade Container

As the seasons change and the cooler weather arrives, it's time to remove your colorful summer annuals from your container garden. But don't despair if your empty pots, especially those positioned in a shady spot in your yard or porch, look stark and sad. You can easily create an absolute oasis of lush greenery in that large container, even if it only gets a few hours of morning sun during the fall and winter. Opting for shade-tolerant evergreens will allow you to enjoy a continuous display of gorgeous greenery regardless of the season.

Making an evergreen shade container is all about choosing the right plants for your weather conditions, and blending different colors of foliage to design an eye-catching display. For the cooler seasons, there are plenty of evergreen shrubs that will make your landscaping look great all year round, and some of these are great for containers. Choose varieties that not only love the shade, but also have interesting colored or textured leaves that will compliment each other beautifully. Just remember to use the simple formula for designing a container garden, and include spiller, thriller, and filler elements. Choose plants of varying heights, as well as ones that will spill over the edge to get that lovely balanced look.

While you can choose any variety of small plants that thrive in winter weather for your container, and a visit to your local garden center will provide many options, you can also follow Gardening with Creekside's tutorial exactly. Note that they use a large water trough for their planter, providing the plants with plenty of room. If you have a smaller container, you may need to opt for fewer or smaller plants. They start with Florida sunshine anise, which has leaves that release a strong licorice scent when crushed. These leaves are chartreuse through summer, then turn a bright golden yellow in the fall, and fade to a pale color through winter, providing a variety of different looks with just one plant. The next plant used, the tractor seat plant, is also commonly known as leopard plant because in some cultivars the dark green leaves are spotted with gold. It will even produce showy yellow blooms in summer, adding to the year-round interest.

Another cultivar that really adds some pop is the marvelous Heuchera cultivar 'Wild Rose'. This plant has stunning rosy-red leaves with distinctive charcoal veins. For a lovely and soft texture, the autumn fern is a great choice, and it is evergreen or semi-evergreen in many areas. The lush green feathery fronds exhibit shades of gold, orange, red, and pink as they start to unfurl. Finally, Carex 'Feather Falls' adds variegated evergreen foliage, which spills beautifully over the sides of the container.