For more drama and impact in your summer baskets and containers choose your plants with care. Here are the five best hanging basket plants for your garden.
Summer pots and containers, hanging baskets and window boxes really need the wow factor to earn their place in the garden. A Fabulous planter full of colour and drama will enhance your garden, welcome visitors and even help support pollinators too. Choose plants with the most bang for your buck for the very best results.
Look out for award winning plants like those with the RHS AGM (Award of Garden Merit) and buy from a quality supplier so that you can be sure your plants are strong and healthy and ready to grow.
Here are the five best hanging basket plants for your containers.
Begonia Apricot Shades
If you’ve never grown this amazing plant you are really in for a treat. It is truly spectacular. Begonia Apricot Shades produce so many flowers in different shades of peachy apricot yellow and orange that sometimes you can’t even see the leaves. Fed with Flower Power Premium Plant Food this extraordinary plant will flower its socks off for months on end, overflowing the edges with gorgeous colourful flowers. The plants are tolerant of the British weather and will thrive in sun or shade. But the really great thing about these plants is that you can overwinter them and grow them year after year so once you’ve invested in them, they will get bigger, grow stronger and make even more flowers than last season. They provide a stunning, bright orange display and that’s why they make the list of the five best hanging basket plants.
Award winning Surfinia petunias
It’s not surprising that Surfinias are the top selling trailing petunias in the world, that really deserve their place on the best hanging basket plants list. Their long trailing stems and large brilliantly coloured flowers will delight you with an amazing display, all summer, whatever the weather. Surfinia petunias offer fantastic flower power all summer and are the perfect choice for baskets and containers. The flower filled stems cascade to 90cm (3ft), filling hanging baskets and window boxes with colour. They have superb weather resistance, so look great even if it rains, perfect for our British summers. The plants are very easy to grow, vigorous, disease- and weather-resistant
A few surfinias have been awarded the coveted RHS Award of Garden Merit. Look out for these because they are the very best varieties; Surfinia Purple, Surfinia Pink Vein and Surfinia White.
Award winning trailing fuchsias
Fuchsias are one of our most popular summer plants, particularly loved for their intricate and colourful flowers produced throughout summer and autumn. But there are different types, upright, bush and trailing varieties that grow in different ways. When it comes to baskets and containers the trailing fuchsias are a brilliant choice thanks to their long trailing stems covered in flowers. They’ll thrive in both sun and part shade. The plants are covered in beautiful, colourful flowers all summer to mid autumn. They are easy to grow, vigorous and they thrive in sun or shade.
Fuchsia ‘Jack Shahan’ produces beautiful large, single, rose pink and deep pink flowers.
Fuchsia ‘La Campanula’ bears masses of small, semi-double dark pink and white-pink flowers all summer long.
Fuchsia ‘Annabel’ is a semi trailing variety so its perfect for most planting scenarios. It has beautiful, large, double, pendant flowers in tones of soft pink and creamy-white.
Tremendous trailing ‘Precision’ geraniums
If you’ve ever wanted to recreate those amazing displays of trailing geraniums, now is your chance.
Trailing or ivy-leaved geraniums, (or pelargoniums), are extremely popular summer bedding plants for containers and hanging baskets, bringing a profusion of colour all summer long. Perfectly suited to the British summer weather, their gorgeous blooms are set off by the dark green leaves.
They are a great choice for baskets and containers thanks to their long trailing stems and masses of colourful flowers.
Geranium ‘Precision’ are stunning varieties with large, semi-double blooms are set off against glossy, dark green leaves. They are a must-have for baskets and containers.
Geranium ‘Precision Amethyst’ with rich mauve pink flowers, and Geranium ‘Precision White’ is a lovely white flowered variety with hints of light pink.
Geranium ‘Precision Light Pink’ has glowing pink flowers, and Geranium ‘Precision Rose’, has flowers in a lovely deeper pink colour.
Beautiful Beauticals
Beauticals are astonishing new generation petunias. They combine the size and beauty of petunia flowers with the mass flowering and superb weather resistance of their cousins, the calibrachoas. So you get the best of both worlds. They are a fantastic choice for baskets and containers, flowering for weeks on end. These are fabulous rain and weather proof petunias that put on a brilliant display, whatever the weather. The neat mounding plants are covered with so many flowers you can’t see the leaves and they keep flowering happily from June through to October.
If you don’t like the slightly sticky foliage of ‘normal’ petunias, then you will love these because they have non-sticky foliage.
Beauticals are often referred to as super petunias and even petchoas, as they’re a cross between petunias and their closely related cousins, the calibrachoas. Richard has fallen in love with these plants and is so impressed by them he thinks that they are one of the finest new bedding plants of the past few years. “Every gardener I’ve met who has grown them loves them. They’ve got incredible flower power but they are also tough, weather tolerant and easy to grow.” The flowers have wonderfully rich colours and are produced all summer long on plants that grow into neat mounds, covered with blooms, and growing up to 30cm (12in) high and up to 40cm (16in) wide. Look out for these three amazing varieties in rich spicy shades. Beautical Caramel Orange has golden yellow bloom with caramel centres. Beautical Cinnamon is sunset orange, turning to copper shades. Beautical Sunray Pink has pink petals, with darker veins marking the lovely yellow centre. It is absolutely superb.
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