Tag Archives: Urban Gardening

Memorable Container Garden Designs to Revisit

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Here’s ten container gardens which I fell in love with and why from my past creations. I plan to show 10 at a time over the next months. Why? Because I will be deleting the photos from my database soon and it is a way to savor the memories!

Hanging Baskets with a Mix of Houseplants

One year, I created many hanging baskets with various houseplants for sale. The reason was the houseplants were gorgeous. Additionally, the hanging baskets had a drain hole with a removable plug. It is so important to have drainage for your plants so these hanging baskets would work well. The plants were also extremely healthy and I thought, “Why not?” I sold quite a few of them. Each had a different mix of houseplants. Houseplants have their own unique sets of challenges. To help reduce them, start with healthy plants, which these were. Look the leaves over and make sure there are no discolorations or signs of insect damage. Houseplants like warm temperatures during the day and cool at night. They would be fine hung outdoors in the summer in these hangers in the right spot. Most houseplants enjoy bright indirect light and do not take direct sun too well. Having them in hanging baskets allowed placement in the home or outdoors in summer. In the summer outdoors, use caution so it is not in full sun where it would burn the leaves. It is imperative to allow water to drain out of the pot, and in this case, a hanging basket. These had a removable plug. This allowed proper drainage. Otherwise, I would not have used hangers for these plants. Hopefully the plants continued to thrive for the customers who purchased them.

Balcony Spiller Plant on a High-Rise

This plant impressed me immensely. First, it tolerated the full sun conditions of a high-rise balcony, and it grew so fast and full. It would make my plant-based mind mouth water! I started with a small plant and it grew very long, spilling over the edge of square planters. This is why I refer to them as “spillers.” I wrote all about this plant in a prior post. It really had other amazing features like it is easy to take a cutting to root for more plants. The red blooms appeared all summer. The plant did not get any insect damage and was drought tolerant. Read the post below if you wish to learn more. The post has some more photos too. Click below for more detailed information.

Trailing Red Small Daisy Flowers that can Take it Rough

Blue Planter Box with Blue Wall and Canna Lily

One year a lady in my town was building and selling wooden garden planters. I had to have one and situated it on my deck. I stained the planter box and attached trellis wall with an aqua-blue colored stain. Then started to plant it with a mix of sun lovers. The tall canna lilies were stunning and grew to the top of the wall. Below in the base wooden square planter were succulents, flowering summer annuals, and lots of color. I blogged about this planter too. Here’s the post. It shows the progression of growth of the plants from start to later in the summer season. It also identifies all the plants. Click below for more.

My Aqua Blue Planter

Wedding Pots with Euphorbia ‘Diamond Frost’

I remember Euphorbia ‘Diamond Frost’ being super popular one year. It has delicate white flowers. They are suitable for a wedding theme. These were used in wedding pots I rented to a customer one year. The client asked for blue pots and abundant flowers. I worked hard on these tending to them all summer and delivering them for the outdoor wedding. I wrote a blog post about them below. The nice thing about the white blooming plant is it can stand alone. It can also be used in combinations. Either way, it still looks lovely. Click the prior post link below for details about Euphorbia and the accompanying plants in these blue planters and pots.

Wasabi Coleus with Vivid Lime Green Coloring is a Top Performer

A Tapestry of Succulents and Hens-n-Chicks

This has got to be one of my all-time favorite creations. It was a square cement like colored planter on a high-rise balcony. I was thrilled to fill it with various small hen-n-chick plants (Sempervivums). I also used other unique succulents and dripping down spillers. I felt it was “magazine worthy” to be honest. I know I took a boat load of photos of this planter and the accompanying ones. I’m surprised I don’t have a post about them on this website, but I’ll research that more later. You can see I used small gravel to top dress the soil around the plants. This offered a more finished look. I placed Donkey’s Tail (Sedum morganianum) in two of the corners. This way, it would drip down over the edges of the square planter. By mid-summer, these plants were double in size! Some larger Echeveria plants were included (they look like rosettes). In the center is a stunning Aeonium (plum colored). All of these succulents were in top-notch condition upon planting them. The planter was seen from inside too. This offered a nice touch for admiring the plants all summer long. After the season was over, I removed many of them to continue propagating them.

Barrels with Rubber Plant (Ficus elastica)

For years I planted two barrels in front of a package store in my town. One year, I used Rubber Trees. Why not I thought, they are an easy-care plant and have huge leaves and they should not be over-watered. Being watered infrequently is beneficial. The store owners sometimes found it challenging to find time for watering. But what really surprised me was how large they grew in one season! I stuffed some small houseplant ferns around the corners. The rubber plants were showstoppers. They grew wide and full. This particular Ficus had darker leaves and red tips which made it more striking. I was able to remove these plants and keep them a few more years longer inside my greenhouse.

Round galvanized pots

This one is more about the pots than the plants. I just loved these pots and had to have them. I placed some Agave babies in the three small pots. I also put a few succulents (Echeverias and a Hen-n-Chick) in the larger round pot. Each had a simple pre-drilled single drain hole in the bottom (a must). I took this particular photo on the deck next to my greenhouse one day. These ended up being moved to my large deck against my house. I didn’t sell them and still own those pots today. The agave plants outgrew them of course and were moved into larger pots later.

Round Urban Pot with More Succulents

This was one of the accompanying planters on the high-rise. I filled them that year with succulents, agave, and other heat lovers. As with the square planter noted above, I topped dress them with gravel or stone. It gave a nice, finished look plus it helps reduce splashing of water when watering or during rain falls. These plants thrived in a rough environment of heat and strong sun outdoors. Granted some succulents actually like less sun but these performed very well. Succulents like well-draining soil. They need good air circulation, and it would get breezy or very windy here. Some prefer bright indirect light, while others thrive in full sun. A moderate temperature is also ideal. They can handle extreme heat, which they did handle in these urban cement styled planters. Also, the outdoor location provided sun for half the day and shade for half. It was perfect because the shade gave them rest from the intense heat. The plant in the background with rounded shaped leaves is a Silver Dollar Jade (Crassula arborescens).

Thank you for visiting. Stay tuned for more features!

Cathy Testa
Date of this post: 2/7/2026

Cathy had a small business focused on container gardening. Today she and her husband are retired. They like to go camping now thus camping locations have been added to this blog in addition to plant stories.

Self-Watering Pots Rock on a High Rise

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Self-watering pots, those with a reservoir area at the base of the pot to hold water for the roots, were not high on my list in regard to usefulness. I had tried them at home on my deck outside and I found that I didn’t like them for several reasons, such as, they tend to get overwatered when it rains and stay in a flooded state (unless you use the drain plug to release the overload of water), they don’t allow air to circulate well when waterlogged, and things like that. In fact, several years ago, I actually wrote a post about how I just didn’t like self-watering pots. I felt they were not good for plants! See that prior post below:

My Take on Self-Watering Pots
Post above from 2015. Wow, times have changed.

Boy, did I change my mind when I experienced using self-watering pots on a high-rise balcony. On the high-rise balcony, which I tended to for five years for clients’ plants in various pots and some self-watering pots, the environment is so different, I guess you could say, the environment has big weather extremes. And because one of those extremes is intense heat and strong sun, the self-watering pots (they were actually long planter boxes) did not stay flooded after a rain fall for long. The sun and heat dried them out much faster than self-watering pots I used at my home at ground level or on my deck.

A big environmental or climate consideration on a high-rise balcony for the plants was the extreme heat and full-on sun (as I refer to it – sun that is full on and intense). On some days, in the middle of fall, or even winter, it was like being on the beach up there on a balcony so high up if the sun was out. On hot summer days, I would have to make sure I worked on the balcony during the period of day when the sun passed by and there was shade from the buildings so I wouldn’t roast, but that was not often doable. Let’s just say, it gets very hot at times, almost unbearable, so plants which tolerate drought and heat were critical as well. To clarify, this was 38 floors up on the top of a building in a city exposed to all elements from sun, wind, etc.

Because of the environmental extremes such as sun (and wind), trying to keep the soil moist for the plants was more of a job for my clients. They would have to carry water out from inside their penthouse. By hand, with buckets! There was no outside water source, so my big fear was will they water enough? And they did fortunately. Otherwise, the plants would be toast from the extreme sun and heat.

However, with self-watering pots, some of that was solved. My clients actually had two long planters that were self-watering pots before I came onto the scene. When they pointed them out to me, I didn’t say much because I always felt those planters were problematic (as noted above in my prior post from many years ago), and I believed in watering plants in pots yourself. But I was the fool in this case, because I learned quickly, those self-watering planters were winners on a high-rise. So, for those who may be doing some urban gardening, take a look at self-watering pots. They may be very helpful to use if you have plants that require moisture and also if you have intense sun (and wind) on your open balcony up high.

Let me explain why. If the rain fall was abundant, the fact that the sun was so strong and hot after at times, the soil would dry out. The water would not stay in there and flood the planters, like they did at my home after a rain fall. It would be the same exact weather at my house and theirs but due to being up so high, the planter would not stay waterlogged. Waterlogged soil will rot the roots or kill them. It was working out, especially for herbs. Herbs can take dry soils usually, but they do need moisture at times. I started to fall in love with their long self-watering planters.

I learned lots of lessons by working on a high-rise thru experience. I also have knowledge on plants and which were tolerant of conditions, drought tolerant, loved heat and full sun, but I still had lots to learn and plants to test out. In the case of self-watering pots, I discovered that they rock on a high-rise balcony.

The self-watering planters did need to be stored for the winter, however, which I offered as part of my services. I would wash them well, store them and return them in the spring with fresh soil and fertilizer. It was working out and they still have those planters today – those were a very good idea, and an excellent investment.

Pots and planters have special considerations on a high-rise which is another thing I will write about, and I had to find solutions. I’m kind of an out-of-the box thinker – AT TIMES … so I got really creative when during the first year there, which I will write more about later. Weight for example is a big factor. Again, it is not like pots near the ground, there were weather considerations all the time.

Plants that I felt did very well in their self-watering long planters were herbs. I did try smaller compact type of patio cherry tomato plants one year, but they kind of fell over from the winds, so that did not work where the long self-watering planters were positioned near the railing. However, herbs did very well in these. Some herbs in general can take dry soils – herbs like rosemary, for example. Later, I ended up acquiring some tabletop pots which were also self-watering and started to use them with succulents on their high rise as well. Those worked out well also. Succulents do not like soggy soils, so when it rained so much that it flooded the pots, it was fine because the sun and heat would dry them out fairly quickly. Or you can drain them if need be. It was just working out so much better than I would have thought.

A couple things I did was I added some small pea gravel in the base where the reservoir holds the water to weigh down the planters. As noted above, due to extreme winds on a high-rise, I was concerned the planter was not heavy enough. I also used standard potting mix with slow-release fertilizer. And sometimes, I top-dressed the top of the soil with either pea gravel, mulch, or moss, however, it was not really needed but I liked that “finished off” look to add some style to planters.

Here are some photos. I know I have more, but it takes a while to locate them. When I find them, I will add to the next post. I rather enjoyed taking them the planters to my greenhouse to clean for the winter and replant in the greenhouse to deliver in each spring. I felt they were kind of Zen. The herbs would grow three times the size at their balcony – I know I have photos of that but will have to share them when located! It always amazed me how much the plants grew when I would return for a fall change out. Balconies are wonderful places to have a full blow herb garden if you have enough sun, which this place did.

Self-Watering Long Planters with Various Herbs
Self-Watering Tabletop Planter with Succulents Above

Thank you for visiting,

Cathy Testa
Container Crazy CT
Blogger in East Windsor, CT

One more photo below!