Blue pot changing...again!

I like the pots much.

Shame about the Pieris, it looks so healthy in the photos:(

All your pots look great, the combinations of plants is excellent, really good blog.

They look really nice, wonder if the pieris succumbed to the awful weather?

I love thosde pots and you final planting in the larger one is a really good choice it will look fantastic when the Azaela Nicola is in flower [a picture please] :0)

Enjoyed this blog B. I have that Pieris, must go and check to see if it is ok. Sorry yours didn't work out. I love the bronze leaved azalea and the heucherellas though. I've had Alabama sunrise before, but it didn't survive because I planted it in sun. This one won't take much sun at all, but your corner looks shady there. :) I like permanent planting in pots too, but I prefer them looking fresh like yours always do. In fact, I've just sat down to have a think about what yellowy things I could have in my big black pots now I've taken the phormiums out!

It's a real shame your Pieris didn't come through the winter! Too much rain perhaps? We had a terribly wet year last year & the rain over the winter didn't ease off till March. I loved the photos of the Pieris, the leaves & flowers were fabulous!

Hope your new planting does well for you. Sounds like a good combination! :-))

Well done B. another successful pot planting. They are lovely pots. :0)

love the big one Spritz..the colours look great..:-)

Lovely pots and compliments on the choice of plants.

Thanks, all. :-))

Karen, yes, this corner gets some sun as you can see, but not full sun and not all day either. I lost an Alabama Sunrise in too much shade!!!

I really don't know why my beautiful Pieris died. I suppose it might have been the wet weather - I've certainly had other losses because of that. I checked carefully in case it was vine weevil, but it wasn't.

That Alabama Sunrise is a fussy plant!

Such a shame about the Pieris, we grow it in the garden, it does look battered, but no more than usual, I thought it might be the dreaded vine weevil.....we drench all our pots now, just in case, have lost too many plants to the little blighters!!
The pots look very heavy, but arn't they beautiful? love all your combinations, you have the knack Barbara.....

Thanks - I like planting up the pots - but it was sad to lose the Pieris. I hope yours improves.

I fell in love with the three blue pots - I haven't come across any others like them! They are indeed very heavy.

Yes, they are gorgeous and I've not seen them either.

The GC I got them from had a huge area full of pots - I called it 'pot heaven', but sadly, they've closed down. I wanted to look at troughs there, and found out via Mr Google. Isn't that a shame. Nowhere else has such an enormous range.

So annoying when places you love close down!

It really is - I was asked where I got them, and of course the person was disappointed.

what do vine weevils look like? We have lost plenty of things in pots and wonder now if this is the reason.Do vine weevils like ALL plants or some more than others?Had a pieris a few years ago, it was disapointing and didn't grow much. Love pots, but they certainly are more of a problem than garden beds and borders.

The grubs cause the problems in pots - they look like little cream coloured worms. If you look in the compost around the roots, you'll see them. I don't honestly know if they eat the roots of every plant, but I suspect they might.

Really beautiful planting, SpritzH - I love azaleas for their drama - I have inherited a beauty called (by its (still-attached) label) 'Azalee de Chine Orange' - anyone know what that'd be in UK?

And your choices are planted in gorgeous pots - I love their "muted" colouring!

I am always looking for pots that will look good against my old stone walls... Plastic I have to say is not for me (or only in short-term), and even nice terracotta pots tend to "shriek" until they age a bit (I never can be bothered to coat them with yoghurt, etc.!) and the bright glazed ones, though they can look ok in our bright sunshine, do limit the colour of the plants you can house in them..... I have a few nice (and v. expensive!) duck-egg blue and honey-coloured pots I brought from UK - but I spectacularly lost a glorious big ribbed blue one of those because (silly me) I forgot that a small city garden in Norwich might indeed have permitted its survival outdoors throughout several winters, but the snows of the Limousin countryside definitely wouldn't!

Ah, these problems of aesthetics! At the moment if the plant inside them lives and is flourishing, I'm heaving a sigh of relief - everything is so late, isn't it? Though I did see a local with some beautiful cheery flowering pots of 'geraniums' out on her windowsill today, so presumably here in France our frosts considered to be are over - yippee!

About time too - except that we've had a slight frost here two mornings running. :-(

Yes, absolutely everything here is about 3 weeks later than usual. That's going to cause me problems with the open day dates fixed so far in advance. I can't change them, so visitors will see what's in flower which will be different ones from previous years!

I'm glad you like my planting choice - thank you. Since I took the photo, the plants have grown apace and the Campanulas have actually started to do what I hoped - trail over the edge! No flowers yet, though.