Plant a Wildlife Container Garden!

Wildlife container gardens support biodiversity where planting in the ground is not an option. They support wildlife habitat on apartment or townhouse balconies, courtyards, stoops, or patios, and can be an extension of a yard on porches, patios, decks or even driveways. I've added wildlife container gardens just about everywhere I don't have soil!

• The landing at the bottom of my front steps has a handful of large ceramic pots I’ve been gifted over the years filled with a mix of native plants and kitchen herbs.

Wildlife uses my collection of large blue planters as an extension of my rewilded front yard - like this sleepy orange sulphur butterfly sipping nectar from blue mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum) in the fall.

• On my back deck I have a large cedar planter I scooped up from Nextdoor overflowing with native plants that are left standing throughout the year.

It's amazing how many native plants thrive in this giant cedar planter I've had for almost ten years now.

• The dozens of pots on my back deck are from a variety of sources – some were gifted, some were found on the street (I’m amazed at what people throw away!), and most were from my neighborhood Buy Nothing Facebook group.

Terra cotta is the unifying feature of my wildly abundant prairie inspired wildlife container garden.

My planter style is similar to my yard landscaping. Native plants are combined to create a more natural and wilder look than the cliched thriller, filler, and spiller plant combinations encouraged in the traditional horticultural world.

I visited a local traditional nursery chain to take an ornamental planter photo because I knew before going that they would have various "thriller, filler, and spiller" displays with the seasonal winter ornamentals they sell such as pansies, silver ponyfoot, and cyclamin. The decorative plants in these planters offer no benefit for wildlife over the winter and will be replaced in a couple months with a spring variation.

Recently, the teak table and chairs on our front porch finally gave out so we upgraded to sturdy, high quality new chairs and a retro café table my daughter spray painted a cheery golden yellow. A table covered with smaller pots was also getting a bit wobbly so I splurged and bought a new cedar planter from a local business called Garden Head Planters that fits perfectly on the porch. They deliver locally which makes my life easier. (They also ship anywhere in the US)

I'm always happy to elevate small local businesses creating a quality product that helps make it easier for folks to support nature where they live!

The potted porch plants didn’t quite fill the new planter so I added more plants from the pots on my back deck - so now the four foot planter is filled with an abundant mix of annuals, biennials, grasses, sedges, and perennials. Like a native yard that dynamically changes over time, native container plantings are also every evolving but on a much smaller scale. For my new planter I’ll let it all go wild to see what works and edit out or add more as needed as time goes by.

My new planter is both functional and beautiful!

The native plants include American hog-peanut (Amphicarpaea bracteata), plantain pussytoes (Antennaria plantaginifolia), columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris), Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pennsylvanica), river oats (Chasmanthium latifolium),  lance-leaved coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata), blue mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum), Bottlebrush Grass (Elymus hystrix), Robin's Plantain (Erigeron pulchellus), Carolina crane’s-bill (Geranium carolinianum), bee balm (Mondarda fistulosa), spotted bee balm (Mondarda punctata), slender mountain mint (Pycnanthemum tenuifolium), orange coneflower (Rudbeckia fulgida), black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta), scarlet sage (Salvia coccinea), lyreleaf sage (Salvia lyrata), blue skullcap (Scutellaria laterifolia), heartleaf skullcap (Scutellaria ovata), woodland stonecrop (Sedum ternatum), widowsfill (Silene stellata), blue-eyed grass (Sisrynchium angustifolium), zigzag goldenrod (Solidago flexicaulis), calico aster (Symphyotrichum lateriflorum), common blue violet (Viola sororia), and golden alexander (Zizia area)

I can't wait to see how the native plants in my new wildlife planter mix and mingle over time!

I was so satisfied with how the wildlife planter turned out that I've added three more planters - and I don't think this is the end of my transition to larger planters!

I'm almost too excited to fill the new planters because of all the possibilities. There are so many native plants I want to try in them!

Wildlife planters don't have the uniformity of ornamental planters made with mass produced non-native annuals. When growing potted native plants the variables are greater than with nursery plants that may have been bred to either rebloom continuously throughout the growing season or to be indestructible (which makes them more likely to become invasive if they escape cultivation). Native plant growth is dynamic and dependent on growing conditions such as light, moisture, soil, and the size of the planter.

Replacing mass produced seasonal annuals in planters is a sad cycle the home and garden industry has trained homeowners to do. Right now every ornamental planter has a pansies in them that will reliably bloom all winter for a ho-hum show. Native plants are in tune with where they grow - so there won't be any flowers blooming in my wildlife planters in December!

Planters are ideal for experimenting with native plants and learning more about how they grow in just about any space - no yard needed. The combinations are endless!

There is no one way to make a wildlife planter! I created and manage this wildlife planter just outside the entrance to my community garden that is situated in a 13-acre nature park. I designed it to authentically reflect the garden and the wild spaces at the park by adding both native plants and some herbs.

Below are tips to increase the chance of success with native planters

• Grow larger plants in larger pots unless you have a reason for making an exception which I have been known to do. For example, I potted some winter sown false indigo shrubs (Amorpha fruticosa) along with other winter sown seedling in empty terra cotta pots a few years ago to protect them until they got large enough to plant out in the ground. They thrived so well that the following spring I left them to see what would happen.

  
  

  Amorpha fruticosa would naturally grow to about eight feet tall but they're only about four feet tall because of the small pots - which is perfect for my deck. They would naturally get lots of moisture so they're healthy and happy in the smallish pots as long as I don't let them dry out for long. Every year silver-spotted skipper caterpillars defoliate them and they are doing better than the Amorpha fruticosas I planted in my yard where I just don't have ideal growing conditions for them.

False indigo shrubs (Amorpha fruiticosa) are surprisingly successful habitat support container plants.

• Native plants in planters need to be watered regularly. This point is key because a benefit of native plants growing in the right condition in the ground is they tend to be drought tolerant once established meaning they can tolerant abnormally dry conditions for a period of time even thought they may not be drought resistant meaning they will not necessarily survive an extended drought because we don’t live in an arid climate. There just isn't enough soil in planters for plants to access when it dries out.

Wildlife planters are intentionally as natural as possible, but they still need to be watered. Capturing rainwater with a rain barrel is a sustainable way to ensure they don't dry out.

• To cut down on how often you might need to water and to protect the plant roots, get the biggest pots you can. Although the wildness of my prairie-inspired terra cotta pot collection fits perfectly with the aesthetic of my yard and offers habitat support for just about all the wildlife that visit or live in my yard, all those smaller pots need to be watered more in the summer or have deep plant saucers underneath them. If time and effort are an issue - bigger is better.

There is an upside to putting trays and saucers under the terra cotta pots to cut down on how much I need to water my prairie inspired wildlife container garden in the summer. They are also used as a water source by wildlife such as chipmunks, squirrels, and birds.

• Native plants grow densely in container plant communities where I plant them close together to create a living mulch. This helps regulate the soil temperature and retain moisture which can cut down on how much the containers need to be watered.

  

  This small section of a large wildlife planter on my back deck has spotted beebalm (Mondarda punctata), self-heal (Prunella vulgaris), Downy wood mint (Blephilia ciliata), blue mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum), lance-leaf tickseed (Coreopsis lanceolotat), and other natives plants intertwining to form a dense plant community that serves as a green or living mulch. This is what the "ground floor" looks like in November!

• Let leaves fall and cover the plants over the winter the same way they would if the plants were in the ground. A thin layer of leaves over the pots it will help insulate the plant roots, cycle nutrients back to the soil, and help keep in moisture. A leaf layer also supports the wildlife that might use the pots to overwinter.

In March I found this Common Eastern bumblebee queen searching under the leaves in a large terra cotta pot for a place to start a new nest - or maybe she had emerged from overwintering in the pot, I'm not sure!

• In general, keep the plants a similar size range in each planter. For example in my new porch planters the plants are different heights - but they’re all under three feet so it’s less likely that one plant will dominate.

The plants in this thin partially shady container planter are all 3 feet tall or less and include bluestem goldenrod ( Solidago caesia), common blue violet (Viola sororia), white avens (Geum canadense), golden ragwort (Packera aurea), mouse-eared coreopsis (Coreopsis auriculata), Piedmont Barbara's buttons (Marshallia obovata), zigzag goldenrod (Solidago flexicaulis), Southern beardtongue (Penstemon australis), and white-tinged sedge (Carex albicans)

• Plant native plants that bloom throughout the growing season for pollinators and other wildlife. This includes the early spring and late fall transition periods at the edges of the growing season called the shoulder seasons.

In late fall goldenrod and asters are ideal shoulder season native plants to add to a wildlife planter. This video of native bees covering showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa) growing in a wildlife planter on my back deck was taken in early November!

• Try matching how plants grow, which is called plant sociability. Richard Hansen and Friedrich Stahl coined this term back in 1993 in a German book called Perennials and Their Garden Habitats and ranked plants by how sociable or ambitious they grow, but the plants in the book are not native to North America. Thomas Rainer and Claudia West also talk about sociability in their book Planting in a Post-Wild World but don't rank plants. I’m unaware of an extensive American resource with a sociability ranking for plants native to North America.

Sociability can also simply mean matching the growth rate of plants as best as you can such as planting clumping plants together and plants that spread vigorously by rhizomes together.

This equation can be a bit more nuanced depending on how deep into gardening you are. I might mix clumping and rhizomatous plants for a variety of reasons. For example, pairing low growing, fast spreading plants work underneath larger clumping plants.

I might even give ambitiously growing plants their own pot where they will literally be self-contained.

Highly sociable native plants that will quickly colonize an area are a perfect choice for growing in a singular container - like the yellowroot a friend brilliantly grows in a barrel planter on her deck.

• Don't worry about being an expert gardener and just start small and go from there. Successes and failures are part of the learning curve - the cost benefit is low and native plants can be easily changed out. To up the odds for success, skip the big box garden centers or traditional nurseries and support a local native plant nursery where they can give specific plant suggestions for your container garden.

Local native plant nurseries are a great resource for getting suggestions for native plants that might work in a wildlife planter. For example, a local native plant nursery (Beech Hollow nursery) near me often showcases wildlife planters, has offered workshops in making a container garden using native plants, and even carries pots and container planters.

• Finally, the natural beauty of a wildlife container garden is in its function. It can offer an opportunity to support a coexistence with wildlife instead of creating an ecologically useless decorative display with an emphasis on color, form, and control over nature. Every single one of my native planters support wildlife in some way throughout the year. The wonder of the wild is the reward.

Every day, my wildlife planters give me the gift of watching wildlife use my deck as an extension of my rewilded backyard - like a mother cardinal feeding her fledgling after foraging in container grown native partridge pea plants (Chamaecrista fasciculata).

*The plants and suggestions I’ve listed are for the Southeast where I live. Check to see what plants grow in your ecoregion and adjust.

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