Fill your windows with seasonal color.
There are window boxes available to suit the aesthetic needs of any property. Fortunately, it’s not hard to track down an interesting addition that enhances the home’s visual appeal and unique personality. Take a look at your window’s shutters or trim to get an idea of what style of window-installations box might complement them the most.
The best locations for window boxes are next to south-facing windows or on deck railings, where they will get enough of sunlight and can be readily tended to. You can give taller plants more room by attaching them a few inches below the window.
Seasonal changes necessitate a change in the flowers and accessories in your window boxes. Let’s think beyond the box for some low-cost options.
Window Box Designs for spring
Redesigning your window boxes in the spring will give your home a new lease on life. After the winter, inspect your container carefully to ensure it doesn’t need any repairs and has adequate drainage.
Now is the time to plant some cheerful spring flowers and plants in your window box. When choosing flowers, it’s important to think about the weather in your area. It’s easy to get carried away by a garden’s vibrant colors, but a late freeze might ruin your show.
Selecting a single plant to fill a window box in the spring is a straightforward option, and other varieties may be added as needed once summer arrives. Add a few small, well-maintained boxwood plants that will thrive year-round, then surround them with white flowering plants and top it all off with a lovely trailing “spiller” like ivy or sweet potato vine. Note that it is simple to propagate sweet potato vine from cuttings; hence, a single plant can quickly fill in multiple containers. As you remove plants to be replaced in the winter, you might even find a sweet potato in your box.
Inventive Planters for the Summer Windows
When spring turns to summer, it’s time to prepare your window boxes for the season by adding plants that thrive in full sun and high temperatures. Geraniums have a wide range of flower colours and leaf patterns to choose from. Quickly filling a box to the point of overflow, petunias are a popular annual flower.
Million bells, sometimes called calibrachoa, are a great alternative to petunias for summer window boxes because they bloom continuously from spring through October and don’t need to be deadheaded. There may be a daily misting requirement in arid regions. Million bells come in a rainbow of colours, from bright white to sunny yellow to nearly black purple.
Summer is a good time for brighter flowers to provide colour and curb appeal to your home’s exterior. Choosing between verbenas in vivid shades of purple, scarlet, and hot pink is simple. Snapdragons and the purple dracaena with its spiky leaves are two examples of tall “thillers.”
Planting herbs and compact plants like lettuces, kale, and cherry tomatoes in a window box display can serve as both a decorative accent and a source of fresh produce if your location receives full sun.
Planters for the Fall Season
When autumn leaves fall, you can still have a profusion of colour on your windowsill. All the different coloured pansies and chrysanthemums are out now. Keep growing long purple fountain grass, decorative peppers, kale, cabbage, croutons, and coleus in your window boxes. When the flowers on your mums have faded, you can move them to the garden where they will bloom again next year if they are an annual.
Add some fall colour to your window boxes with a collection of miniature pumpkins and brightly coloured gourds. Even though most flowering plants won’t survive the winter in your area, you may still enjoy a beautiful autumn display from Halloween right through Thanksgiving by filling a window box with pumpkins and gourds and decorating them with sprigs of evergreen. After Thanksgiving, you may spray-paint pumpkins gold, silver, or white for winter holiday brightness.
Because of their ability to thrive all year round in warmer locations, succulents are a versatile addition to any design scheme. If you want to go all out, you can even fill an entire flower box with succulents of varying sizes to form “thrillers,” “fillers,” and “spillers.”
As an added bonus, if you want spring flowers in your window box, plant some bulbs in the late fall.
Ideas for Winter Window Boxes
Decorate your window boxes for the holidays and beyond this winter.
Various evergreen branches, magnolia stems, dogwood branches, and winter berries are needed to make winter window boxes. Whether you prefer to lay them on top of the soil or to stick them in, both methods work equally well; just water as usual after installation. Put some lights in your flower box, and decorate it with huge pinecones. Use shiny metallic ornaments in gold and silver for the holidays.
If you can’t find any appropriate branches or plants in your yard or at your local Christmas tree lot, you can always purchase artificial replicas from a craft store or online and use those instead.
