Troughs in the garden

Excellent blog BJ and so love your dog:)

Very nice, I especially like the Saxi' in flower, and your mate :0))

those are lovely Brian i particularly like the mini hostas and the japanese painted fern ~ truly beautiful

Loved the mini hostas too Brian... very, very nice ~:o)

Oooh Im drooling, I so want to be lying there with Jamie in among those troughs :-)
Is the Irish Tatting fern the one that looks like it is in 3D jumping out at us?
Love the hostas, maybe I should fit one in on my rockery.

Smashing pictures Bjs. You have some beautiful plants. I love that globularia. Scotsgran has this and it looks even better in the flesh!
Jamie looks really cute lying there.
I also love your Japanese painted fern. I have 2 new ones in the garden this year.
Thanks for sharing :)

Willinilli
yes you are right regarding the fern.
By having the Hostas raised up off the ground I have a head start on the slugs
but still having to remove some, not sure how you would get on with them in a open rock garden.

How lovely, Brian! Favourite picture is the one with Jamie, of course.

Didn't even know there are miniature hostas - they are lovely.

Great blog Brian, love the mini hostas and Japanese painted fern.

Very inspirational! I have 3 old white sinks that I intended to plant up this year but never quite got around to it. Also didn't realise there were mini hostas! That could solve my problem. I wanted to go for gentians as I love the blue colour but the ones I liked needed full sun so didn't suit the position I had in mind for them :-)

Smashing. Really like that painted fern! All your containers look great :) Jamie looks very content indeed x

You no what they say let sleeping dogs lie.
Because when he wakes its for sure he will want to run and fight me for his toys.

Very inspirational blog. I have to search for more Troughs, for my Alpines. Using plastic planters when too much to do is not right ! Need to be able to move mine to weed around when needed, airborne weed seeds are a nuisance. Have added your contribution to my favourites.
Thank you for the Gentian information.

Lovely set of troughs, Brian. Pretty planting :o)

I like the way you have displayed them at different heights Brian. I saw someone use mini Hostas in a planter and it looked great. The different leaf colours are nice.

Linda lifting that one was fairly easy to do as that is one of the Polystyrene ones,you are also seeing very small plants closer up that is a +. bit more difficult with the stone ones.I move them on rollers same as when they built the Pyramids.Perhaps thats what I did in a previous life while you were painting on the inside.lol

Does it take long to make those troughs? I make mine out of hyper-tufa but some of them come out better than others. I use a mix of portland cement, peat moss and either sand or perlite. Haven't had the great results with sand as I have with perlite though. My troughs don't look anywhere near as nice as yours.

great blog, and inspiring for us trough-wannabes. I've probably asked before, but how much depth do you allow for the plants? I'm always afraid of not givng them enough.

Fran it all depends what you want to grow in it, some things like sedums would grow in a couple of inches of compost Sempervivums similar,lots of alpines are shallow rooting but ideally would have a stone under which the roots can run that way they stay cool and retain moisture.

gotcha, thanks. I was planning on mini confiers mostly, cos that's what most mini trees seem to be! and then some flowers around and among them. hadn't known the tip abnout stones under, thanks for that too.

love all your troughs Brian, something about them i love, lucky you having all these :o)

Fran there are people on GOY who no much more about Conifers than me,But I do know the more common mini conifers dont stay mini for long and one would be the Maximum I would plant in a trough.There are other things that would stay more reliably dwarf.
Brian

Rkw the polystyrene troughs do not require a lot of work they are shaped with an electric paint remover or carefully with a blowlamp, the process causes the polystyrene to partially collapse and the outer surface becomes crystalline and hard,in doing this it takes away the hard lines,the boxes i have been able to obtain are particularly thick 1.1/2inches all round,so there is plenty to play with without fear of melting the whole thing.The ones you have been looking at are finished with textured masonry paint,but other ways could make them look more realistic.I have been going to paint on some Yogurt that is good for a weathered look but not got around to it.
Brian

I was surprised to read that the difference between a miniature conifer and a dwarf one was how much they grew each year, rather then the actual size it grew to.

i didn't know about treating polystyreme with heat; I've only read about concreting or hypertufa'ing them. Which is why I'm still dragging my feet over getting mine done!

Fran
when i used the word dwarf I was not referring to conifers,I had in mind a dwarf Willow that has been growing in a trough here for around 10 years and still only about 8/9inches high,will take a picture.
I also know of a Birch Tree' Betula Nana' that stays dwarf for years and they are not Bonsaied,

oh, lovely! I dislkie the idea of bonsai'ing (*s* I'd not enjoy being forced to wear soes six sizes too small - just occurre to me, botanical equivalent of Chinese foot-binding!) - naturally dwarfing plants are very different, they're doing it because it's their nature to do it.

I've got several books on miniature gardens, mostly black and white pics, they're that old, and they talk about full-grown trees six or so inches high. that might be a bit small for me, given my vision (besides, how small would flowers have to be to be in scale?!); I was thinking of trees in the region of up to three feet when fully grown.

Would love to see pics, please! and I'll check out the Betula you mention.

My Nana's very small only 4ft 9inches :-)

Julie this your dog you are referring to! not your OH.
Ive seen donkeys smaller than that .I am going to see if you have posted any pictures

Fran I used old fish boxes for lightweight troughs. I used a wire brush to roughen the surface and then painted them with masonary paint. Bjs I'll need to lookback and see your blog on making troughs. I love the way you have planted them.

are the fish boxes strong enough on their own? I've read that they might break if moved; of course, if they're not to be moved there's no prob! I've been dithering about concreting them over (don't think I can make hypertufa, so start simple!) to add strength to the boxes. Buf if just painting them will do, then that's one less excuse for not starting on them!

Fran i have no experience with fish boxes the ones I use are for transporting frozen meat as opposed to fish and I think because of the extra weight involved they are thicker,1 1/2inches to be exact.
The fish ones seem plentiful in the north and a number of Goyers use them perhaps one will comment.

well, they're called "fish boxes", whatever they contain round here! Polystyrene boxes of various sizes and depths. It'd be intresting to see what others' experiences are. lol I'll have to try Googling "frozen meat box"!

I have lots of fish boxes. I have them to top off a stone wall. The smaller ones are easily moved even when full but I just have sedums in them. I also have much larger fish boxes and I'm growing daylilies in them, again atop the wall. It took OH and I to lift them on to the wall but they did not show any signs of stress from being moved. I did a blog about them in July 2011.

I remember those pics and that blog, Scotsgran; we had a convo on where to get the boxes, and I pasted in a link I found to a company that makes/sells them. (I also included the link to your blogs in my own "hypertufa links" blog.)

I could just try the couple of boxes I have - last time I went down the market just as the stalls were packing up I could have picked up a dozen in five minutes, but already had loads of shopping to carry. Sigh, I'll have to go back at closing time and take a barrow with me! but I was thinking that, if I could use the boxes as moulds to make more, then I wouldn't need to go out and find more.

I live in a one-bed council flat so there's not much room to do contrete-mixing indoors or to have troughs hanging around for the x weeks they need to set properly, nowhere dry outdoors, either. maybe if we get a summer this year ...

Concrete boxes are very heavy Franl and given that you intend to have them on a table I think you will need to get the wheelbarrow out and make that trip to the market. You will be able to get them planted out sooner too. If you want some of that yellow succulent that I grow I can send you some.

lol I also thought about papier-mache and plaster of paris - maybe paper over chicken wire, let it dry, plaster over that, varnish to waterproof. probably no go.

as the boxes are going to go on the tables, maybe I could just do a base, something to support them underneath.

but, sigh, I was dreaming about creating my own mini landscape, with hills and distant mountains ... could still do that, of course, with plaster, clay or concrete. lol, and I want a pond, and a waterfall when I can work out how to power the thing!

lol maybe I should learn to crawl before I start going in for a Marathon!

Sounds to me like you are well on plan. Dreams only become reality if you have the dream first. If the dream comes after the event it will probably be a nightmare. So dream on we are all waiting.

smiles, these dreams are more out-of-focus ideals, so it'd be like trying to shape smoke. I need to get them a bit more solid - or, better, just try - it's amazing how many alternatives suggest themselves once once's started - or, lol, with me, just after I've findished doing something the hard way, I suddenly think, Oh, why didn't I do xxx? still, it's all experience.