Most of my adult life I moved once a year and was an enthusiastic killer of potted plants. Now that I'm settled in a house I'm hoping to keep some of these babies alive. Unfortunately I can only have outside planters because our new cats eat, mangle or otherwise harass anything in a pot.
The front planter has one Helianthum nummularium 'Henfield Brilliant'.I love this plant's gray green foliage and bright delicate orange flowers. The flowers are short lived but there are a lot of them. The flowers are also thigmonastic, which means they move in response to stimuli, so if you touch the stamens they slowly move outward, it's so cute! I haven't seen any bees around it yet but it has been raining pretty steadily since it started blooming.Closer picture of the back planter:
I'm experimenting with combining plants in this one. The one on the left is Heuchera villosa 'Cintronelle'. Heuchera's are awesome and this one has this great neon-y chartreuse foliage. This plant gets pretty big, like up to 2 feet, so I might eventually transplant it. The flowers are spikes of creamy white flowers and it blooms in late spring to summer.The Primula polyantha 'Victoriana Silver Laced Black' on the right also gets fairly big so we'll see how it does in this pot. I like an overflowing full looking planter and this one should get fluffy by summer. This Primula is sooo pretty, it has a yellow center w/ black petals and white edges and blooms late fall to mid-spring.Here's a picture of the blooms, aren't they stunning?
The bulb in the back is Dierama pulcherrimum 'Slieve Donard', common name is fairy wand, and I've never seen this plant in bloom in real life. It has deep reddish purple flowers and blooms in late spring and summer. I can't find a good picture to use that isn't copyright protected. so here's a link to one. this is supposedly a nice cut flower and in late fall I'll try dividing it since it spreads by corms.