Question from Tracey:

Answer from Pat:
A few native plants can be grown in containers, such as grasses. Mexican feather grass (Nassella tennuissima), for example, native to Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico, is one of the most drought-resistant of ornamental grasses often seen mixed with other plants in containers. But in my opinion if you are looking for the most satisfying theme of drought-resistant plants for patio containers, your answer is succulents, and if you like them, also cacti. Two years ago I emptied out all my patio pots, rearranged them in attractive groups of various sizes and shapes, put broken crockery over all their drainage holes, filled them with ordinary potting soil (since it retains moisture so I would not need to water as often), and filled all these patio pots with drought-resistant succulents. I already had some of the plants growing in other parts of my garden. I purchased others at plant shows, botanical gardens, nurseries, and even at my local farmers’ market. With the help of a friend, I carefully arranged the plants to please my eye, playing the various textures and colors and shapes against each other. Then I continued to do the same thing with other potted arrangements here and there throughout my garden.

Few garden projects have given me as much pleasure as has this one or produced such delightful results. Also, once the weather cooled down in fall I stopped watering these pots altogether and told my gardener not to water them. It is now April and we still have not resumed watering. In return for no care other than picking out the occasional snail, the colors, flowers, and burgeoning growth has given us an ever-changing and totally glorious display. In summer I water once a week, if that. Though I have a gardener who comes to my garden once a week, I could go away for a week or a month at any time of year even if no one were caring for my plants, and I know these tough little performers would still be there when I got back. For ideas, see Debra Lee Baldwin’s new book “Succulent Container Gardens.”

Many of these plants can also be grown in hanging baskets. One of my long-time favorites is donkey tail (Sedum morganianum). These thrive in semi-shade, for example hanging from tree branches, as do orchid cacti (Epiphyllums). If you feed epi’s in accordance with the month-by-month instructions in my book, these flowering cacti will also reward you with a spectacular display of blooms in May of many different colors according to variety. Some have iridescent blooms, others are fragrant at night and attract sphinx moths.

Related posts:

1. Drought-Resistant Gardening
2. The Finest Patio Plants: How To Select, Grow, And Arrange
3. How Gardens Change as We Grow Older

Question from Brenda:

Answer from Pat:
The hallmark plants for containers in cold-winter climates are hardy evergreens. Your garden center should have a good selection. Books and magazines, especially those on formal landscape design and roof gardens, will give you many ideas for the style of the container and the color and shape of the evergreen.  Be sure to invest in pots and containers, such as half wine barrels, that can withstand freezing temperatures without shattering. Also, remember no plant can survive winter outdoors if its roots freeze solidly. In northern Europe, shrubs and trees in containers are brought indoors in winter or treated as annuals. Sometimes the shrub and the container is wrapped to protect the plant from cold, but this won’t work when the winters are too cold.

Look around at local houses and hotels with container-grown plants. This is the best way to see what grows best in your area. One way to spark up container-grown shrubs in milder winters, where temperatures occasionally reach freezing but not far below, is to plant tulips or other hardy bulbs around the roots of evergreens in fall, but again, if the bulbs freeze it will kill them.

The best solution is to fill containers with seasonal color. The choices these days are far wider and more varied than even twenty years ago. Companies such as Proven Winners™ specialize in such plants and you can keep some of the selections going through winter in the house. When you empty out the plants in fall, decorate the tops of the tubs with ornaments, dried grasses stuck upright in the soil, wooden tree forms, or boughs and large colored globes for Christmas.

Related posts:

1. Container-grown Cape Honeysuckle with Wet Feet
2. Book on Container Gardening
3. Container Grown Trees

Answer from Pat:
Cape honeysuckle (Tecoma capensis, Tecomaria capensis) is a flowering shrub, sometimes a climber, native to South Africa. It needs full sun and grows best in places like Florida or California where it is often rampant and invasive but beloved for ease of growth, pest and disease resistance, drought resistance, and for its bright orange or yellow flowers that bring hummingbirds. It blooms mainly in fall and winter.  Thus Cape honeysuckle is not likely to brighten your patio with bloom this summer. Most likely it won’t set buds or bloom until late summer or fall. Prune after bloom, not before. Cape honeysuckle can survive in Boston Massachusetts in a greenhouse, but it is not adapted to living outdoors through a Boston winter. If I were you I’d go back to the nursery or store where you purchased this plant and ask them politely to explain why they are selling Cape honeysuckle as a patio tree for summer bloom when it won’t bloom until fall and is not adapted to living outdoors year-round in Boston.

Related posts:

1. Is Cape Honeysuckle (Tecoma capensis) Toxic?
2. Container-grown Cape Honeysuckle with Wet Feet
3. Honeysuckle Dying

My friend who also supplies me with organic fertilizer said it is the water, he was having similar problems. He planted 6 tomato seeds for an experiment. 3 got tap water, the other 3 filtered water – tap water grew to 2 inches, a bit sad looking. The plants that got the filtered water grew to about 15 inches in the same time and looked great. So I flushed the honeysuckle with filtered water.Filtered water in, sucked out the run-off and discarded it, I did this for an entire day, and cut some of its bare branches back. It seemed for a while the problem was arrested, but the tree was just existing, not flourishing. By then it lost about 75% of its foliage. 3 month ago it started again, leaves turning yellow and dropping, it looks pathetic, but still produces flowers.  I have shed tears hugging  my honeysuckle and told her how sorry I was that I don’t know how to fix this.

Your experience and wisdom are my only hope.

Answer from Pat:

It is very sad to have a beloved plant die. Fortunately, your question gave me all the clues I need to tell you what’s wrong with the plant. In a nutshell, it is not adapted to growing in a container and it has wet feet, but clearing up these problems may not save the plant. So let’s survey the facts and then look at possible solutions.

First, common names are subject to much confusion and the one you cite is incorrect. There is no plant called Cape Cod Honeysuckle, though you are not alone in using this name; it’s even on the internet. If there were such a plant it would have to be a hardy honeysuckle shrub or vine, most likely Lonicera japonica ‘Halliana’, a fragrant, white-flowered, hardy and invasive climber. (The word “hardy” has nothing to do with whether a plant is “tough” or easy to grow. Hardy applied to a plant means it is capable of going through a cold winter without dying.) The true honeysuckles are Lonicera’s. Many are fragrant but none have orange flowers. (Lonicera ‘Dropmore’ has red flowers and the rest are white, yellow, or bi-color.) Thus I know the plant you have with orange flowers is Cape honeysuckle (Tecoma capensis) and it is a large shrub which can be grown as a climber. The words “Cape” in its common name and “capensis” in its botanical name derive from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, where this plant is native, not from Cape Cod. This plant could not survive a New England winter on Cape Cod.

The main problem you are having is not alkaline water, but the fact that you are trying to grow Cape honeysuckle (T. capensis) in a container and it is not adapted to growing in containers.  Also the fact that you said you sucked out the runoff and discarded it sounds as if you used a bulb baster and that you have a saucer under the plant that fills up with water. If the roots of this container-grown plant are allowed to sit in water, this is a condition called “wet feet” and will kill this plant. Few plants like wet feet but particularly this one which is very drought-resistant and likes to run dry. The problem of wet feet can kill many plants, for example, a potted geranium will die from wet feet quicker than from any other problem. This can be solved by filling the drainage saucer to the very top with gravel and setting the pot on top of the gravel. Water will then drain down into the gravel and not touch the roots of the plant.

So let’s look at the characteristics of this plant. Cape honeysuckle is a large rampant shrub that can grow 20 or 30 feet tall if not frequently hard pruned to keep it lower. Grown in the ground it is a tough, easy, plant that can take alkaline water, grows well in any kind of soil, and needs little irrigation.  It likes to put its roots deep into the ground and prefers deep but infrequent watering. In coastal zones it sometimes survives with no irrigation whatsoever.

Your plant grew well at first because its roots had not filled the container. Once the roots had filled the container the plant probably got root bound. The roots ate up all the soil and went round and round. Now when you watered, the hole in the bottom might have been clogged with roots and water might have sat in the bottom of the container, thus killing roots. Or alternatively, water might have by-passed the roots altogether and run straight down around them into the bottom of the container and the saucer beneath. Either of these conditions can cause all the leaves of a plant to go yellow and fall off as you describe. It continues to flower because it thinks it will die. I have seen plants such as a dwarf Meyer lemon growing in a half barrel with this problem. It often happens to Ficus benjamina grown in a pot as a house plant.

If you were able to take your plant out of the pot and put it in the ground, it might survive. Unfortunately, your only solution now is to empty it out and try something else. For a quick cover this year, try scarlet runner beans. They bring hummingbirds. For a permanent fix, plant a shrub or climber better adapted to growing in containers. Some bamboos grow well in containers, including golden goddess bamboo (Bambusa multiplex ‘Golden Goddess’) and golden bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea). I have had luck growing angel’s trumpet (Brugmansia) in containers. I like the one called ‘Charles Grimaldi’ best but there are others that work well in containers also. Once established they need almost daily water and frequent fertilizer and bloom in waves of bloom year round.  Heavenly bamboo (Nandina domestica) is another plant that can survive in a container for some years and dwarf citrus is an elegant possibility, especially kumquat, due to its small size and dense foliage.

Regarding alkaline water, softened household water is not good for any plant since it contains more salts than ordinary tap water and these build up in soil. Most potted plants do okay with ordinary cold tap water, however, as long as the water is allowed to drain out the bottom of the plant and flow away from the roots. Filtered water is probably better as long as the soft-water company has come out annually check and confirm it is relatively free from salts. (Companies don’t do this service regularly unless a customer asks for it.)

Related posts:

1. Potted Cape Honeysuckle Patio Tree
2. Is Cape Honeysuckle (Tecoma capensis) Toxic?
3. Honeysuckle Dying

• Blood red trumpet (Distictus buccinatoria).
• Bougainvillea, variegated ivy, Star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides).
• Bower vine (Pandorea jasminoides).
• Coral Pea, Lilac vine (Hardenbergia ‘Happy Wanderer’) Long winter color in sun.
• Cup of Gold (Solandra maxima).
• Easter lily vine (Beaumontia grandiflora).
• Lady Banks rose (Rosa banksiae, and R. banksiae lutea).
• Lavender trumpet vine (Clytostoma calistegioides).
• Mexican flame vine (Pyrostegia venusta), spectacular winter color.
• Sweatheart climbing  rose (Rosa ‘Cecille Brunner’, cl.).
• Variegated ivy (Hedera helix ‘Little Diamond’) or other variety

Related posts:

1. Patio Plants That Can Climb Up To Sun
2. Patio Plants For Sun And Warmth
3. When to prune climbing rose

Related posts:

1. Seeds for Lobelia richardsonii
2. Patio Plants That Can Hang Down Against Bare Ugly Walls
3. Container Patio Plants

In spring: Plant gladioli, tuberous begonias, caladium, dahlias, and other warm-season bulbs and tubers.

Related posts:

1. When to Plant Tulips
2. Patio Plants For Hanging Baskets
3. Patio Annual Color

When these have bloomed out, switch the plants to such warm-season choices as marigolds, Salvia splendens, blue salvia (S. farinasea), Nemesia ‘Blue Boy’, and edge with sweet alyssum and lobelia.

Also use perennials in pots and keep them going year round by pulling out faded ones,     plugging in new ones.

Related posts:

1. Patio Plants For Sun And Warmth
2. When To Plant Annual, Perennial, and Biennial Flowers From Seeds
3. Planting for Fall and Year-Round Color in Southern California

Related posts:

1. Climbing Patio Plants
2. Choosing a vine for dappled shade
3. Patio Plants That Can Hang Down Against Bare Ugly Walls

Related posts:

1. Patio Plants For Full Shade
2. Patio Plants That Can Hang Down Against Bare Ugly Walls
3. Patio Plants For Hanging Baskets