4 Ideas For Filling Your Large Garden Planters

New Zealanders looking to fill their large outdoor planters don’t always have the easiest time of it.

Even the most avid gardeners have to wrestle with the issues of soil quality and compaction, root space, overwatering, nutrients and sunlight exposure. Most of these challenges can be solved by carefully selecting the plants you’d like to nurture, and ensuring everything you plant in your large outdoor pot can cohabit together.

Discover some of our finest ideas for filling large garden planters at Birdies Garden Centre, below.

1. Showcase the beauty of New Zealand flora

Finding a native New Zealand plant to fill your large outdoor planter can prove tricky. But, there are a few quintessential species that can thrive alongside each other – common flax, cabbage trees and New Zealand ferns included. They flourish in New Zealand’s varied climate, whatever the weather.

2. Make your garden an edible oasis

Large outdoor planters have so much room! It can be difficult to know what to do with it all. We propose planting herbs, vegetables and fruit-bearing plants to make your garden an edible oasis. Not only do these plants look stunning, but they serve an important purpose – they can put food on your table, saving you money in the long-term. Some Kiwi favourites include kumara (sweet potato) and the medicinal kawakawa. Culinary herbs such as rosemary and parsley are also extremely useful, as are sweet strawberries and tomatoes.

3. Create a garden filled with florals

For New Zealanders who’d prefer flowers over fruit-bearing plants, it’s not as difficult as you might think to create a flower garden from scratch. New Zealand has an array of native blooms, unique to the landscape, that are ready to be planted in your garden. In the warmer regions of New Zealand, poroporo is an attractive shrub that produces star-shaped purple flowers to liven up your outdoor space. The delicate New Zealand iris also proves a valuable addition to any garden, and thrives in most temperatures. Their verdant sword-shaped leaves are visually striking, and complemented by white flowerheads.

4. Embrace a sensory paradise

Gardens can be functional in more ways than one. In New Zealand, it’s easy to create a soothing, sensory garden with plants for large outdoor planters. Sensory gardens are multi-purpose; they’re calming spots for meditation, but can also be packed with delicious edible plants and other landscape features that capture your interest.

We recommend planting a mixture of flora with different colours and scents that best please you. Lavender and sage are popular choices, as are ornamental grasses. Wooly thyme has a particularly intriguing texture! Mint leaves could be another valuable addition to your sensory garden, alongside blueberries, strawberries and even snap peas.

A small water feature or wind chime are the perfect finishing touches to any sensory garden and sizeable planter pot in New Zealand.

At Birdies Garden Centre, we stock a wide range of large lightweight planter boxes and tall raised garden beds so you can plant till your heart’s content! It takes a lot of hard work to create a garden thriving with life, and our products give your plants the best shot at growing. For more information about our garden planters, don’t hesitate to get in touch.