Container Gardening in Qld
With shrinking gardens and more paving, decks, and balconies surrounding our homes, container gardening is going to become increasingly important in Queensland outdoors. But even if you have plenty of garden space, containers are useful for providing eye-catching accents, decorating difficult corners, and filling out garden beds.
In this climate, however, growing healthy plants in containers presents some challenges, particularly as pots are often placed in the most plant-unfriendly locations like sun-scorched patios.
Containers have so much to offer...
- instant effects: a decorative pot adds character instanly. Many plants available in advanced sizes to complete the picture.
- easy effects: no digging required, use a decorative pot or cheat by hiding plants in the garden (see below)
- flexibility: move them around, easily replace sick plants with fresher one or your favourite in flower
- portability: take them with you when you move (subject to whatever movement controls that may apply where you live to control the spread of pests and diseases. Check with appropriate authorities)
- save water: only apply to the plant, not the neighbourhood's tree roots as well
- expand the possibilities: create gardens in the air, on walls and other "impossible" places.
Some other pages on this site which have related information include:
Fruit and Vegetable pages have some links about growing edibles in containers
Plants Links to pages covering a variety ornamental plants (with an emphasis on subtropical and tropical plants), which might lead you to more information about container culture of particular species.
Green roofs and living walls
Incorporating planted material into the architectural design of a building has been receiving a lot of attention lately. While the urban landscape may be improved aestheticaly as a result, the main purpose of these designs is to provide practical benefits to the people using the buildings and the environment in general such as temperature control, air quaility improvement or stormwater management. The following links contain more information about this developing field:
Living Walls Reearch Overview of the Living Walls concept and current state of development worldwide. The Centre for Subtropical Design, Queensland University of Technology
Rain Gardens of West Michigan
Containerised Turf
A form of container gardening on a grand scale, the playing surface at the University of Phoenix Stadium is grown outside in a giant tray and wheeled inside the stadium for football games. This means shade problems inside the stadium are avoided and utility of stadium for other events is improved. Read more at The Human Flower Project: 106 Million Players: Super Turf '08
More Links
These links are for general information. Obviously, not all information will be appropriate to your location.
Design ideas
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