The 36" Planter...

   Every year for the past couple Eric and I have been putting together the planter out in front of his office Architectural Alliance. This year we are a bit behind, but finally got it done last night. I lurv this one. It is by far the best one we have done.

  We hit up Sunnyside Gardens. One of the many, cute local gardens shops on the south side on Minneapolis. The only thing we knew was that we had some birch logs from our cabin to add to the mix. So, we wondered around for a bit, looking at this and that... and as I type I just realized I did not photograph the things that did not make it. Whoops. Sorry. Anyhow, back to my story. The planter they have out front is 36" wide and low. Which means we need some height. Last year we got this cool tropical palmy leaf plant. Which looked cool on the first day, but then was immediately shredded by the wind after that. So, this year we thought grass. Thin and wispy which the windy will like to blow around, but focusing on that word thin.. It will not shred. After seeing a lot of grass options we finally settled on one that has a little purple and green. It will get about 4" taller than it is and have some plumes. Fabulous.. color and texture! Next... which flowering item do we choose. We looked at some bright yellow daisy's. Cute. Hmm. Like the daisy. Not sure about the yellow, but we will see. Then we spotted this more traditional looking white daisy and thought.. Hmm.. with this white birch this might look good. Actually after reading the labels the white daisy is actually a Chrysanthemum. A Neptune P.P.A.F. Chrysanthemum to be exact. So, we piled those into the cart. We do a lot of guess work as to how many we need as the planter is 36" wide. This year we were only short 3. Pretty good, if we don't say so ourselves. Onto the next flowery type plant. First we grabbed this cute straw like purple ball with bright green leaves. It was considerably lower than the white daisy-like plant which we thought could be interesting. We had started to lay out the planter in fields. An area of grass in the back with a field of white on the right side of the planter. The grass being the tallest with the white a little shorter and the next item a little shorter yet, was looking to be an interesting composition. So, we grabbed a bunch of those and continued to wander and noodle. Then we saw this cool looking purple triangular leaf item called Charmed Wine Shamrock (Oxalis) ... Super cool.. We like it with the grass a lot better than the purple ball like plant. So, back went that plant and in comes the Shamrock plant. We wanted to add a little more green and after looking at and rejecting the traditional Sweet Potato Vine we settled on Colorblaze Alligator Tears. We liked to two colors of green in this particular plant. We tossed a bunch of those into the cart and went off pay.

Anyhow now after all those needless words get ready for the big reveal....

 Moving around the dirt after a winter of Spruce tips.

 The Sunnyside loot. 

 Laying out the planter. This is the most important part. I do this with all my planters to make sure it looks good before I plant.

 OK... We like.

Now to cut the birch.

 Eric with the chain saw... He scared a few co-workers who were diligently still at work at 7 pm..Poor guys.. :)

 The final look. The birch were hard to photograph from a true scale. They are larger than they look and a little more spread out. There are three if you can't tell at different heights. 

 As you can see we need one more of the alligator plant and we are going to get 2 more of the Shamrock as well to fill in. It was super windy also as you can tell. We had to work hard to keep all of our containers as well as the plants. 

 The much needed detail shot. Love the planter this year. Very Minnesota natural looking.

Hope you enjoyed our 36" in planter experience. 

Alyssa