Progression of a Container, #3

This is a fine example of ‘omg what was I thinking?’ I don’t know if I was tired, if it was season’s end, or simply the end of the day, but no sooner did I finish this than I thought, this is awful.

I loved the heuchera in this mustard colored pot. I popped in the cordyline for height, its color was a good contrast, and the viola was a nice tie-in. Sounds good in theory but it wasn’t working. I reasoned I’d seen worse at Fred Meyer and one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor, so into The Market Place it went.

There was only one problem. Well, two actually. One, I had to look at it every day and it was driving me nuts. And two, it had to sell: Fred Meyer may not be the purveyor of great design, but it has the distinct advantage of being cheap.

I decided to yank the cordyline, use it in another container, and searched the clearance rack where I found late season straw flowers in good shape. Then I added another viola, I dunno why.

Sigh. I still couldn’t stand it, and now it suffered from a pet peeve of mine: symmetry, accentuated through the two violas. But there was very little product to choose from, and I put it back out for sale.

It finally dawned on me what was bothering me with the design: the heuchera was way too big for the container to begin with. It took over most of the planting real estate and there was no way I was ever going to get a good result without fixing that initial error.

So I gave it a big ol’ haircut, which made way for a spiller in the front (also sourced from the clearance rack where plants are often smaller), switched out the tandem Halloweeny violas for a single, beautiful pansy, and put it back out for sale. Then tada! It sold!

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