Hanging Baskets For Summer Display...

Press, Volume C, Issue 29673, 17 November 1961, Page 8

Hanging Baskets For Summer Display...

One of the seven wonders of the world in Biblical days, was the hanging gardens of Babylon. No-one can aspire to those heights nowadays, but at least we can get a good deal of interest and pleasure out of a hanging basket. One sees them used quite frequently in the summer months, and now is the time to plant them for colour in that season. Baskets are obtainable from most garden stores, hemispherical in shape, and constructed of stout galvanised wire. Useful sizes are 12 inches in diameter or above. A small basket dries out too rapidly, so you make more work, for yourself if you buy one too small. Line the basket with moss as a preliminary. This holds the soil in position and it doesn’t gradually filter away with each watering. Some nurserymen use polythene as liners for baskets, and it is quite Effective, as well as easier to use. Black perforated polythene is ideal, and allows surplus water to drain away. Really special-looking baskets are given a rim of mixed heavy soil and chopped straw, moulded round the lip when the basket has been filled with soil and planted. This neat method ensures that watering is easy, that the wire edge is hidden, and also that there is no fear of plants being cut or broken by the wire edge as they cascade downwards. Of course, this careful method is only seen at its best when good carpet moss is used for the lining, placed with the best side outwards. The soil to use is a good well-drained potting soil. If you have purchased a bushel or two of John Innes potting compost for other jobs in the garden, you will find this ideal. Choose your plants and place them in position on a layer of soil in the basket Then fill the basket to slightly under the rim, firming as you go. Some gardeners fill with soil first and then place their plants, but I find there is a strong possibility of disturbing the moss lining this way. Polythene would be quite satisfactory, planting afterwards, of course. I have seen plants placed through the basket wires, tail in and head out, to give a covered effect to the bottom of the basket itself, but there is really no need to use this laborious method, for good plants of the right type will provide ample cover. During the course of frequent watering, too, there is the possibility of soil wastage as well with inverted planting. Watering is most important. If there is a secret in growing hanging basket plants, then this is it. If a basket is well prepared, it is practically impossible to overwater it, so you’ve no need to worry about giving too much. A well-grown basket, filled with soil —and moist soil at that—is quite heavy, so make sure your support is sufficiently strong or calamity will result. Hang it sufficiently high, too, so that it doesn’t tangle with unwary visitors at night. Plants are the key to a good basket, and they should nave a naturally trailing

habit, or have pendant shoots. But know where you are going to place your basket before you plant it. Ivyleaved geraniums, for example, will enjoy a warm sunny spot, but fuchsias grow best in semi-shade. Here are a few suggestions:— Sunny Spots. Ivy-leaved geranium, Tradescantia and Zebrina, Plectranthus oertendahlii, lobelia, the brilliant Thunbergia gibsomi, and annual nasturtiums. Shadier Places.—Asparagus sprengeri. begonias, particularly such sorts as the pendant tuberpus types, which are ideal, Davallia canariense (the hare’s foot fern), fuchsias in variety—such varieties as Cascade, The Doctor, Marinka, and Red Spider are first-rate, Saxifraga stolonifera, and selaginella. It is usually best to allow plants to become established after placing them, before putting the baskets out for display. One-useful triok in a small ’, greenhouse . with little head-room is to use small hoops, slightly smaller than the diameter of the basket, which have been welded to short legs. These can be placed on the bench and the basket treated as an ordinary pot-plant when it is placed in it, although the trails still have room to develop.