A happily established pot

I love it when you see a pot working out - unlike my Heuchera which I bought at the start of May (and has now passed onto the happy plant place in the sky: aka the bin), thankfully the other plants that I bought at the same time are now looking well established and amazingly happy (thus far!). The clematis is starting to thread its way both up and along through the railings to the left. I thought you might like to see the before & after photos - not bad eh?! ;o)

Happy days - not only is it Friday, but I have new POTS! :o)

I finally succumbed and spent the last of my garden vouchers (not bad since they were from Christmas) on a few more pots. How could I resist? I went to Homebase to buy some Leucojums which a friend (who works there) said they had in, only to discover that they had a 3 for 2 sale on their containers/pots. Ooh! Jackpot! So, a couple of hours deliberation later (it takes a while to choose pots AND then decide what plants to put in them!), I returned home with these (the photo shows 2 clematis, but I took 1 back as I realised i'd not enough space):

That was on Monday... and last night I actually got around to potting them up. So my doorstep is now looking far more luscious and green. I've even managed to spread the pots so that they now extend down onto the first step - that's progress for you :o)

So, my new pots contain, (left hand pot) a Heuchera 'Melting Fire' - which I couldn't resist for its gorgeous coloured leaves.

And (right hand pot) a Festuca glauca 'Festina' (the grass), Leucojum aestivum (summer snowflake, which unfortunately have gone a bit floppy), and at the back a Clematis macropetala 'Markham's Pink' (which had a slight accident when I was planting it so that the main stem with lots of growth kind of broke off - i'm hoping that'll help the plant establish itself by forcing it to put its energy more into roots rather than shoots and it'll turn out to be a happy mistake...). I also moved a few Primula in there too, which i've temporarily forgotten the names of, though I can tell you that they're very bright pink when in flower.

I put a bit of grit at the bottom of the pot first. Then for compost used a mixture of John Innes No 3, Westland Multi-Purpose Compost with added John Innes, and a few handfuls of horticultural sand to further increase the drainage (as clematis like well drained soil). I'm hoping that these conditions should keep the new plants happy - they all are meant to like well drained soil, so hopefully they should live well together.

The steps are starting to look so much more garden (and less step) like that i'm wondering if I might put a chair in the hallway/entrance and enjoy the evening sunlight there.