My 2024 Container Garden Successes and Failures

The plants I'll be growing again this year, and the flowers I don't want to see in my 2025 bouquets (no more mignonette!)

There is currently snow on the ground here in Brooklyn, and it’s not the pretty kind. It’s grey and icy, and while it was snowing it briefly felt cozy, but now it just feels like a joke that’s not funny.

Anyhow, weird times! Last week I may have been extra emo, watching too much Grey Gardens, but this week I’m doing my best to forge ahead optimistically in full garden planning mode. I’ve forgotten what a miracle it can feel like, in the very ugliest, saddest month of the year, to be able to flip through cheery catalogs and buy new seeds and build an imaginary garden in my brain. I’ve got my garden journal out, I’m writing lists, I’m working on my sowing calendar. I’m extra excited to grow new varieties, which I’ll talk about in another post, but I’m also taking note of what worked best in last year’s garden—the plants that I loved and the plants I can do without . . .

I like the garden best when it’s a mess of things—in this case some verbascum, nepeta, and cosmos, along with a few Floret originals

The Plants that Lived up to the Hype:

The Floret Originals were definitely hyped, and they were pricey for packs of seeds. And since they were bred with flower farmers in mind, I wasn’t really sure how the plants would do in pots, but I couldn’t resist buying a few packs—the colors were just too good. I grew ‘Precious Metals’ zinnias and ‘Petite Florets’ dahlias, and they did beautifully in pots. The plants grew large and lush, giving me lots of long-stemmed flowers for cutting. No flower farm necessary.

Nepeta ‘Montrose White,’ providing a backdrop for the David Austin mystery (‘Queen of Sweden?’) rose

The Perennials Most Prolific in Pots

I bought this calamintha nepeta ‘Montrose White’ on a whim at a Gowanus Gardens pop-up, and it ended up being one of the most reliable bits of my garden, constantly in bloom. Kind of like a frothy shrub—not the star of the show, but always nice for filling a gap or for serving as a hazy, Cecil Beaton-esque backdrop for a rose or something similarly showy. And the bees can’t get enough of it.

The other nepeta I bought, ‘Junior Walker’, did just about as well, and the white Japanese aster and gaura in the window boxes gave me the airy, wild look I wanted but didn’t always get from some of the annuals I grew.

The Perennials I’m on the Fence about

I’ve said it already, but 2025 is going to be the year that I stick to perennials that do well in pots, because not all of them are earning their keep. For instance I love the two coneflowers I have, but I think I got five blooms total out of the two plants together. And the hydrangea ‘Game Changer’ wasn’t really such a game changer for me, blooming once and then just sitting there. Fine if I had a big garden, but not so great on a terrace where every pot of dirt is valuable real estate.

Scabiosa ‘Fata Morgana’—the bees love it, and I love it, but just not in containers

The Annual I Love in the Ground but not in Pots

This one is sad, because the scabiosa plants I grew in my Portland garden were so large and vigorous and full of flowers (and bees), but every time I grow them in pots they’re sad and spindly. Is it worth growing them again this year? I’m thinking maybe not. I do have a perennial scabiosa that does much better in a pot, so I might just stick to that for now.

The Annual that’s so Much More Interesting in Pots

For me this last year it was nasturtiums, but it could be a lot of smaller plants that can be admired so much better at eye level or within the ‘frame’ of a lovely pot. But I really did love my nasturtiums in 2024—I think I grew four varieties. Some of them trailed out of window boxes, and others filled in gaps, tucked under roses.

Two easy growers: verbena bonariensis and sunflowers

The Easiest to Sow

I’ve always heard that verbena bonariensis was an easy one to grow, but didn’t believe it until trying it out for myself last year, when I sprinkled some very expired seeds into a raised bed, not expecting them to do anything. And at first they didn’t, but eventually tiny little seedlings did sprout, and I’d dig them up and put them randomly in pots, and by late summer there was tall verbena everywhere. Magic! I get the hype now.

The One I Couldn’t get to Germinate

Chinese forget-me-not seeds, from a pack very-much-not-expired, did nothing for me, despite my sowing them twice, and I don’t think I have the heart to try them again.

The nemesia that kept going and going

The New-To-Me Plant that Surprised Me

I first found out about nemesia from A Year Full of Pots, and shortly afterwards found a pot of it in pink at Lowe’s. And honestly it was one of the longest-blooming plants for me, flowering from April to November. I didn’t save seeds but I did put the plant in the coldframe, just in case it feels like pulling through the winter. That said, if I see it at Lowe’s again in the spring I’m buying it. Definitely worth it. In my opinion it’s what all the bodega angelonia and lobelia want to be but can’t.

'Carding Mill’ in its second year in a pot

The Flower that Won My Heart

Roses are just so nostalgic, and this ‘Carding Mill,’ especially, since it was one of the first plants I bought for my 2023 temporary garden, back in South Carolina. I just look at it and marvel that it’s possible to grow something so pretty and romantic on a terrace in noisy Brooklyn.

Biggest Horticultural Heartbreak

Sweet peas also have my heart, and as much as I enjoyed the ones I grew last year I do wish they stuck around longer. I grew four different varieties in two large pots, but this time I’m sticking to one pot, and it’s never leaving the shadier side of the terrace. It’s really a sun trap up here, and I’m pretty sure that’s what led to all that premature sweet pea death.

Our dog Peep, sunbathing and surveying the garden

The Annuals I’ll be Growing Again in 2025

Zinnia ‘Precious Metals,’ ‘Petite Floret’ dahlias, cornflowers, sunflowers, cosmos, nigella, nasturtiums, linaria, sweet alyssum, celosia, thunbergia, verbena, snapdragons, nicotiana, lace flower, cerinthe

Annuals I Won’t be Growing

Mignonette (a waste! is it any prettier in the ground?), scabiosa, California poppies (pretty but they don’t keep in a vase for me), cleome, runner beans (grown up a tee pee for the flowers alongside the thunbergia when it starts to fade—I have something else in mind this time)

Some more paperwhites starting to sprout, a Trader Joe’s waxed white amaryllis, and my favorite ‘Blushing Bride’ amaryllis

Favorite of the Winter Forced Bulbs

So all of them were a delight, really, just so nice to have something to grow in winter. But I like the amaryllis best. Especially the pink ‘Blushing Bride’ bulb I bought at Chelsea Garden Center in Red Hook. I’m glad it didn’t bloom until after Christmas, because the pink is so cheerful right now—the delicate little pink and white, almost silvery, lining on the petals is so much nicer to look at than the snow. There’s one more stalk on the way, and after it blooms I’m going to do my best to store the bulb safely away for next January, when I’ll be needing some cheering up again.