How To Make A Spectacular Pot Garden

How the late, great British designer Sir David Hicks used easy-to-come-by Plain Jane planters to create a spectacular pot garden at his home in England.

WHAT THE PROS KNOW | Garden ornaments can be expensive for sure, but they don’t need to be. Witness the clever way the late, great British Interior and garden designer Sir David Hicks employed ordinary available-in-every-garden-centre containers to create a particularly eye-catching pot garden on his own estate, The Grove, in Oxfordshire, England.

Two of the five pot types that make up Hicks’s container collection—the wooden half-barrel and the plastic takeaway tub (yes that very FREE one!)—would never have a place in the ultra-posh gardens he did for friends and family, but that didn’t stop the irreverent Hicks from using them at home—or from pairing them with other Plain Jane planter boxes in precast concrete and wood.

How Did He Do It?

Hicks used the following four design tricks to create his pot tableau:

1. Pots—Hicks chose pots with strong, simple shapes in a variety of materials for textural contrast. All the planters are similar in height, and each type is introduced in sufficient numbers to make its presence known.

2. Paint—Three pot types are painted varying shades of green, while the other two are painted high-contrast brown-black or greyish-cream.

3. Plants—Every pot type is planted in a single similar evergreen material; all the plants have a similar size foliage. Plants are chosen for a variety of growth patterns, some reaching for the sky, others spreading out or draping.

4. Backdrop—Hicks kept his background simple because the mix and match effect of the planters is visually complex. The plain hedge helps the planters pop, and the pea gravel warms up, softens and unifies the picture. “This planter grouping would not look half so good if the ground were a solid material,” says Vancouver garden designer Ron Rule. —C. Rule

Photo: Ron Rule