We recently visited Surinder Chadha’s beautiful indoor plant collection in northern New Jersey, and today Surinder is sharing his outdoor gardening endeavors from the summer.
Surinder says that the local deer population is rampant, so to avoid having everything eaten, he gardens on the elevated deck outside his home that the deer cannot access.
Pots full of flowers fill every space, both sitting on the deck and up on the railing. If you are limited to gardening in a small area, pots of annuals are a great choice because they will give you huge quantities of flowers and color all through the warm part of the year.
Trees make a beautiful green backdrop to the colorful pots of flowers.
I wonder how much time Surinder spends watering to keep all of these pots looking so lush and perfect.
Annual planters can be made up of mixes of different varieties, as seen in the lower pots, or just one specimen per pot to really show off each particular plant’s beauty.
A towering coleus (Solenostemon scutellarioides, annual) grows on the deck, while shorter varieties sit up on the deck railing.
Classic impatiens (Impatiens walleriana, annual) have been struggling with a new disease in many gardens called impatiens downy mildew, but when they are healthy and happy, few plants for shade can beat them for sheer flower production.
Even this narrow deck space is lined with plants: cheery yellow marigolds (Tagetes patula, annual) and red and white wax begonias (Begonia semperflorens, annual).
Not all of the flowers are confined to the deck. Here by the front steps, magenta and white vinca (Catharanthus roseus, annual) bloom in a big mass, echoing the color of the crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia) blooming behind them.
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