Using thrillers, spillers, and fillers in your garden pots is incredibly fun and a great way to express your creativity. All you need is some sun, soil, and plants that get along well together. The possibilities are endless when it comes to container garden design. Use this guide to make the best choices for your planters this season.

Container Garden Design Layouts

We all want breathtakingly beautiful gardens! When it comes to designing your garden pots with thrillers, spillers, and fillers, there are some guidelines you can follow to create cohesive and gorgeous container gardens. Keep this guide in mind so you can avoid some amateur mistakes—but remember, gardening is about experimentation and creativity! You will find out through trial and error what works and doesn’t work for you. Designing your garden should always be about making your life easier and more enjoyable. Here’s a breakdown of the elements of beautiful container gardens.

Thrillers

Think of these as the focal point of your container garden. Thrillers are the tallest plants and should go in the centre or back of your garden pots. Opt to plant them at the back of your containers if you’re placing them along a fence or wall. Some spectacular and tall plants to use for thrillers are:

• Snapdragons
• Snake plants
• Cordyline
• Lilies 
• Ornamental grass
• Amaranth

Spillers

Spillers are aptly named because they trail or “spill” down the sides of your garden pots. You’ll want to plant these romantic beauties along the perimeter of your garden containers so they can quickly and easily drape over the edges. Some favourite spiller plants include:

• Sweet potato vine
• Creeping Jenny
• Petunias
• Myrtle
• Creeping Phlox
• Lobelia

• Silver Falls

Fillers

You can probably guess what filler plants are; they fill the space between the thrillers and spillers. These are generally plants that don’t get too unruly and won’t compete with other plants. Some great examples are:

• Coleus
• Ornamental cabbage
• Caladiums
• Impatiens
• Geraniums
• Coral bells
• Silver ragwort

 

Now you know the difference between thrillers, spillers, and fillers, you can get creative with varieties and colours. 

Container Gardening Strategy

Get strategic as you plan your container garden. As you choose which plants to place together, you’ll need to know what each needs in order to thrive. Choosing thrillers, fillers, and spillers that won’t compete with each other is key to beautiful and thriving garden pots.

Light: Measure the light for the location you hope to place your containers. Choose plants that can thrive under those light conditions. Keep in mind that your “fillers” or any low-growing plants may get shaded out by your tall-growing thrillers.

Water: You’ll need to find plants that have complementary water needs. When you are planting thrillers, spillers, and thrillers in one location, they will be sharing the same soil and if you are watering one, you’ll be watering them all. Choose plants that have similar watering needs and consider the rain conditions in the area you live in. If you are expecting a dry season or need plants that can withstand some neglect, select as many drought-resistant plants as possible. 

Pest Control: If you really want to step up your garden game, find out what pests and diseases your plants are susceptible to. Knowing the ins and outs of all the thrillers, spillers, and fillers that share a space in your garden pots will help you troubleshoot and prevent infestations of pests and disease.

Playing with Colour

Playing with colour is one of the best parts of planting thrillers, spillers, and fillers into your garden pots. You may already have a clear vision of what colour schemes you want to incorporate into your garden, but if you need some guidance and inspiration, try some of these ideas. 

• Go monochromatic. Keep things simple by sticking to one colour. For example, yellow is one of 2021’s hottest colours. You can plant thrillers, spillers, and thrillers of every shade of yellow and gold. Whichever colour you choose, you’ll likely be able to find many different plants that create visual interest with different textures, heights, and growth patterns.
• Choose a warm or cool palette. If you want to branch out from the monochromatic look, you can stick to either a warm or cool palette. Warm palettes have orange, gold, yellow, red-purple, bright green, and fire engine red. Cool-toned gardens would have hues like indigo, lavender, emerald green, silver and blue.
• Study the colour wheel. The colour wheel is a tried and true method of choosing plants for your garden pots. It can show you complementary, analogous, and triadic colours that will look stunning together.

 

We hope this guide can help you get excited and inspired about the plants to use in your garden pots this year. We’d love to hear about your design choices! If you’re looking for thrillers, spillers, and fillers for sale in Ontario, come visit our garden centre!

 

As soon as August comes to a close, everybody starts buzzing about the latest fall fashion trends. While we also can’t wait for a season full of cozy knits, we gardeners are also gathering inspo for beautiful fall container and planter ideas. Cool weather definitely doesn’t mean the end of the gardening season in Simcoe—it’s more like the home stretch, where you can experiment with different colour schemes and styles until the frost arrives. Here are our favourite fall container and planter ideas for 2019!

The Best Fall Plants for Container Gardening

When the vibrant summer annuals start to recede, these fall-blooming plants take centre stage. The rich colour palettes of these plants add dimension to a landscape of colour-changing foliage.  

Chrysanthemums are that quintessential fall flower we never get tired of, and with so many different cultivars and colours available, they’re anything but basic. We particularly love chrysanthemum container arrangements filled with a mix of sunset colours like red, orange, gold, and pink. Pop a few planters along the front steps of your home for an instant glow-up. 

Celosia are fun flowers with tons of attitude—their neon, tufted blooms kind of look like those “Troll” dolls everybody had in the ’80s! If you aren’t quite ready to lose your ultra-bright annuals, celosia will definitely satisfy your late-season colour cravings.

Pansies may look delicate, but they’re actually one of the most cold-tolerant flowers around. They can sometimes even make it through an unexpected light snowfall in October or November (because in Simcoe, you never can tell when Old Mr. Winter is going to decide to show up!). We could stare at pallets of pansies for hours, admiring their distinctive patterns and swirls of rainbow colours. This season we’re jiving with the burgundy and golden yellow varieties. 

Coral Bells are one of those gorgeous foliage plants where the leaves actually outshine the flowers, with eye-catching shades in all sorts of fabulous colours. While most deciduous plants and trees start to turn gold or orange as their leaves die off, many varieties of coral bells sport these trendy tones all season. Pair up coral bells in a planter with some more showy flowers, and they’ll complement the colour-shifting autumn landscape beautifully.

Cabbages are so strangely beautiful, with their swirling ruffled leaves and cool purple, green and blue tones. They look pretty magnificent in containers on their own, but they also blend in perfectly with a mix of other autumn plants, if you know when to transplant the seedlings. It’s a very versatile veggie too, and you can make some pretty satisfying comfort foods with cabbage for those chilly autumn nights. Ever try sweet-and-sour cabbage fried up with bacon? Trust us; it’ll warm you up from the inside!

Purple Fountain Grass is easily one of our favourite autumn ornamental grasses for potted arrangements. Not only is the colour on-trend, but the texture and movement they add to the landscape are so undeniably lovely. We love to watch those feathery tufts dance in the breeze! Since purple fountain grass is so tall and fluffy, it looks best in the middle of a container arrangement, surrounded by shorter mounding plants or trailing spiller plants.

Fall Container Vegetable Garden Ideas

Lots of vegetables are best grown during cooler temperatures, as our hot summers in Simcoe can actually scorch produce or cause plants to bolt prematurely. While many of us may associate veggie gardening with function more so than style, there are certainly some edible plants that can still bring some visual interest and intrigue to the garden—especially when mixed in with other autumn favourites. Here are some of our favourite fall vegetables to plant in containers.

Cilantro may not be everyone’s favourite herb (to some it tastes tangy and delicious, while others think it tastes soapy) but it remains a staple ingredient in Mexican dishes. If you’re big on having taco nights at home, growing your own cilantro is a must. For mixed arrangements, cilantro actually makes a fabulous “spiller” plant, trailing down the sides of the planter. Add some cilantro all around the edge of your container arrangement, and you’ll love the way it cascades down the sides.

Beets and Arugula are both cold-hardy vegetables that can grow in containers, but they also taste absolutely amazing together. For an easy salad base that you can pluck straight from the pot, grow beets and arugula in the same container. The sweet beets and spicy arugula are the perfect match for a sprinkling of some fresh chèvre, some chopped pecans, and a light vinaigrette. Enjoy!

Unique Container and Planter Designs

With all of the holidays and festivities coming up, adorable themed decorations start popping up in houses all around Simcoe. It’s all in good fun, so you can get away with being a little bit whimsical with your décor. Check out some of these fun spins on autumn container arrangements or brainstorm some new and exciting ideas to try out!

Ornamental Gourds and Mini Pumpkins are classic table centrepieces this time of year, but why not mix in a few with your container arrangements? If you start to find some of your more heat-loving flowers are receding, but your late-season bloomers are still going strong, you can fill in some of the empty spots or bare patches with some cute little gourds and squashes. Even piling up a few around the base of your potted plants on the patio can pull together a really gorgeous display.

Go Rustic with your planter choices. Give new life to old wooden crates, woven baskets, and metal buckets with a vintage-style patina by filling them up with showstopping flower and foliage displays. Even miniature straw bales can make great planters if you hollow them out! Display on your porch or line your garden path for some extra flair.

Dried Hydrangeas are still so stunning and voluminous well after they’ve been cut from the shrub, and they bring a lovely antique-y vibe to potted arrangements. If you’ve got a few dried hydrangea mopheads leftover from your summer garden, pop a few into a planter to add some lovely, muted softness to the colour palette.

Play with Jewel Tones instead of just sticking with the same old reds, oranges, and golds. Deep plums, blue-greens, and silver accented plants will pop against the warm golden scenery. If you’re not confident in your skills at piecing together a unique colour palette, go online and search for a colour palette generator. Pick a main colour or two, and the generator will provide you with a few accent colours that complement your base tones.

Gardening season is far from over, and there are endless ideas and sources of inspiration for beautiful autumn planter arrangements. Plus, as the shifting temperatures begin to fluctuate, the beauty of container gardening is your ability to move them around inside or outside. Visit us at our garden centre in Simcoe, and we’ll help you find some lovely late-season garden plants—and maybe a few cute rustic containers, too!