Beautiful pots - Jean Manocchio's flower arrangements

Sunset, June, 1996 by Lauren Bonar Swezey

Pair a great pot with the right plants, and the results will delight you all summer. Here are nine pages of ideas: great plant combinations, handcrafted pots, and potting soil secrets

"I'm the queen of stuffing," says Jean Manocchio of Belli Fiori in Redwood City, California. "You'd be surprised how many plants I can get into a pot."

Manocchio makes a living creating instant gardens in pots. "You can do a lot more with large containers, be much more dramatic than with small pots," she says. "You have a greater variety of plants to choose from - plants with large foliage, shrubs, and trees - plus you can do multilayered plantings."

Manocchio finds that plant-filled big containers are perfect solutions for paved-over areas where plants otherwise wouldn't be able to grow, such as beside a front door, along a broad expanse of paving, or where pavement meets a house or garage wall.

"But the best thing about large containers," says Manocchio, "is that you can change plants and change the look and experiment whenever you want."

Manocchio created the designs shown on these pages. The plants she used, and many other summer show-offs, are available at nurseries now. June is prime time to shop for them, and to create your own garden in a pot in just an hour or two.

CHOOSE YOUR CONTAINER, THEN YOUR COLOR SCHEME

Manocchio suggests choosing the container first, because its shape and size will help determine the kinds of plants you'll choose. "I'm a container nut," says Manocchio. "If I see a pot with a wonderful shape, fabulous glaze, or great feel, I have to have it." She's even lugged huge pots home from overseas trips.

Manocchio considers where the pot will go, and the style of the backdrop. If the house's interior and garden are Asian, she might choose an Asian pot. For a Spanish-style house, she might use one of her favorite containers from Tlaquepaque, Mexico. "Of course, you can always break the rules and choose something avant-garde," she says.

You should decide whether you want to emphasize the plant or the pot, or both. "If the pot is strong in character, you may want to fill it with a simpler plant, such as a camellia or other evergreen." But if the pot is simple, the plants it holds can dominate, with colorful and bold-leafed varieties to carry the show. "Or you can have a little fun and put brightly colored plants in a colorful pot," as shown below. "Those are my Liberace pots," says Manocchio. "Too much is never enough."

With so many plants to choose from, it's tough to know where to start. Manocchio advises choosing a color scheme first. "Sometimes I work off fabric samples from interior drapery, fabric-covered chairs, and accent pillows. But some of my clients just prefer certain color schemes."

Manocchio avoids the "Barnum & Bailey look" - using too many colors in one pot. She pairs blue with gray because gray makes blue pop out. One of her favorite combinations is gray Plecostachys serpyllifolia with lavender-flowered Limonium perezii and blue trailing lobelia - "like a silver cloud with blue stars." Other handsome choices in this color range are blue hibiscus, salvias, scaevola, and artemisia.

She also likes combining shades of pink, which she often accents with white or gray. For a pot in the shade, that might mean planting pink fuchsias, begonias, and impatiens with pink polka dot plant and 'White Nancy' lamium.

Manocchio describes her "neon" look as "less serious and more playful." Plantings combine bold colors, such as orange, purple, red, yellow, and lime green. For example, she combines yellow begonias, bright orange 'Gartenmeister Bonstedt' fuchsia, and orange-red impatiens.

"There are no hard-and-fast rules" when combining colors, Manocchio says. "You can set the mood and create what you feel."

THE PLANTS, AND THE PLANTING

"Large pots always get lots of attention, so you want them to look presentable year-round, even if there's not much flower color," she says. So she first selects a foundation plant - one with foliage that always looks good. Some of her favorites are citrus, flax, Limonium perezii, maple, princess flower, and sago palm. But she's always willing to break the rules for a special plant, such as fuchsia, even if it has some downtime. And she avoids plants whose roots take over the pot quickly, such as laurel and Myers asparagus.

Once you have a foliage plant, choose plants whose flowers pick up its colors. Manocchio spends time walking through nurseries and looking for plants. She even hunts for plants in the house plant section. "I carry around leaves and other parts of plants so I can match colors or choose complementary textures." For instance, "there are many shades of green, and not all greens go together. And [New Zealand] flax comes in different shades of pink and salmon."

One word of caution when choosing plants: never mix plants with different water requirements.

Before you plant, put your pot, the plants, and bags of potting soil where you want to display the container permanently (once planted, a big pot is heavy, and difficult to move). For air circulation, Manocchio sets the pot in place, then raises it on clay feet. If she's using drip irrigation, she runs 1/4-inch laser tubing up through the hole in the bottom of the pot and allows enough slack so she can run it around the soil surface a couple of times when she's finished planting.