Tall 130 litre pot ideas welcome

amancalledgeorge

Morning all,

A nearby ex-Wyvale garden centre had discounted the RHS endorsed Apta tall pots to a mere £34 each from £119 and treated myself to a couple.

I will place them on a patio area at the end of the garden which gets a lot of light and bits of sunshine morning and evening. In such a big pot it makes sense to me to try either a dwarf rooting stock fruit tree or to go ornamental with a pair of Chinese Red Buds (Cercus Chinensis) varieties Avondale or Ruby Falls or even maybe a Persian Silk Tree (Albizia julibrisin) but the latter I'm concerned it stays dormant for such a large part of the year. 

My style of planting is quite loose with the odd formal accent with an emphasis on Chinese and Japanese plants. I'm based in London so pretty warm all year round.

Feel free to throw ideas my way in case I have missed something really obvious.

Here's a photo of the container for extra clarity  

B3

You will need something to balance the container unless you intend to fix it to the ground in some way.

amancalledgeorge

I'll add a few bricks at the bottom @B3 and it will be against a wall or tall fence. Of course always a possibility to fix in other ways if need be. 

B3

Good plan. Chinese/Japanese sounds good to me. 😊

Perki

I think you would have to fix it directly into the ground through the hole in the bottom if you want something tall, My fibrecotta pots blow over with just dahlias in . How big are the pots ? They don't quite look big enough to me for a small tree and they are going to heat up fast with the dark colour pot so lots of watering and siting is important.

Coral Bark acers like sango kaku with bright red bark would be a good around plant. cloud pruned bux / conifer etc.

Dovefromabove

With pots that tall I’d rather go for something that froths over the pot to contrast, rather that add to the height. I’d probably go for a frothy or fountain-type grass.  Two pots done identically would make a real ‘statement’ either side of the end of a path, or similar. 

Just an alternative idea 😊 

amancalledgeorge

Thanks @Perki they won't be in too much sun as they are near the summer house but will see how it works out. They are about 80cm tall and 40x40 otherwise. Ideally I'd like a plant that could use such a long root run, but if not, easy enough to part fill. I've already have five Acers including a Sango Kaku (which I love). So was leading myself away from them, plus don't think they'd enjoy being caught by the wind higher up. I could experiment with a cheap bare root Silk Tree and see how they work out and underplant them with some trailing annuals. Do like the idea of a cloud pruned yew but will take a bit of saving of pennies to make it happen...but one day. Saw an amazing yew yesterday...totally worth £850 but not quite within budget