Return to the Balcony Gardening Forum
| Post a Follow-Up
help! what to plant now instead of pansies
| | |
Posted by newyorker 6-NY Westchester (My Page) on Sun, Apr 1, 07 at 12:13
| Hi everyone - We have a long balcony (5 ft wide) facing south/southwest and are about 150 feet up. We get hot afternoon full sun from about 2 pm until sunset. My balcony shape is like Jennie's in Philly. We have the roof overhang above us for protection.
I want to plant something besides pansies in my large pots on top of my canna bulbs. The canna bulbs are going in next weekend and will normally sprout in mid June. The large pots are 30 inches wide and taper towards the bottom. The cannas get about 4-5 feet tall but of course the first few months the large pot surface is empty while we wait for these precious plants to sprout.
Last year pansies were great but we weren't wowed really with the look of them. They are low lying plants and we are looking for something with a little more height (a foot would be ideal). I'm looking for plants that are hardy NOW before the frost season is over and ones that have a small root structure so they will not affect my cannas.
Any ideas? |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: help! what to plant now instead of pansies
| | |
| It's hard to find tall, hardy cool-season plants that are not bulbs, but you could try some snapdragons if you can find them, which would give you some height (although many are not that tall but might be taller than the pansies). They tend to be available with other cool season plants like pansies or other plants in the violet family like violas, violets, and johnny-jumpups. I've noticed that most of the spring bloomers tend to be the lower growing groundcover plants like alyssum, creeping phlox, and dianthus (like cheddar pinks, sweet william, etc). Some of the dianthus can get tall though (in a relative sense). You could try some perennials like hellebores or heuchera that also bloom in spring, but those may spread quite a bit and you have canna leaves that would need to come up through them. |
|
|
|
|
