Get a big birdbath. Put two or three large stones in it so that they occupy most of the space. Fill in the area between the stones with some soil and easy-to-grow water-loving native plants, such as waterleaf. For more visual interest, add fiber optic grass or another native grass or sedge. Top up with water.
“Birds love it better than any other birdbath,” according to Pete Veilleux, because it has everything: not only water but also rocks, soil, and plants.
To prevent algae from growing in the water, Pete situates his water pots in at least half shade and adds new water to overflowing once a week, letting the water flow over the edge to float away any mosquito larvae.
Pete demonstrated how to plant a water pot and showed slides and live examples of other native container gardens at a recent talk sponsored by the Gardening with Natives group of the California Native Plant Society. He owns East Bay Wilds, a native-plant nursery and landscaping company.
He's tried every native plant in pots – “or at least every plant family” – he said. Most natives do well, and he's found that a few natives do better in pots than in the ground or are especially easy to grow in pots.
Western azalea, for one, is “very easy in containers and very quick,” he said. In the ground this fragrant shrub can get lanky or won't thrive, but in containers it stays smaller with better form. All it needs is water at least once a week, an annual pruning, and fertilizer once or twice a year.
Tom's Point manzanita, a lush low-growing plant that cascades over the edges, is “wonderful in containers” and one of his “favorite useful plants,” Pete said. It gets large red berries, nearly the size of a quarter, and prefers part shade. He showed it growing in a rusty industrial barrel 3-4 feet high. For large containers where the plant does not need all the space for its roots, he partially fills the container with empty plastic jugs, which greatly reduces the weight of the container.
Brown dogwood, which requires a lot of space in the ground but is easy to grow in containers, gets red-burgundy leaves in midsummer that “look like stained glass windows” when backlit by the sun.
Several native buckwheats do well in clay pots. Cushion buckwheat and Shasta buckwheat, both of which form low mounds, are two of Pete's favorites. He also likes to use a variety of ferns, often with a rock to moderate the temperature and keep the roots cool.
Pete likes to plant pots that change through the year, using combinations of deciduous and evergreen plants, adding bulbs or annuals, and planning for a sequence of blooms. For instance, one pot had elk clover, which dies to the ground in late fall, complemented by the “interesting and beautiful leaves” of wild ginger, heucheras for color, and “wispy, ethereal” five-finger fern.
For most drought-tolerant plants, Pete said, he adds 25 to 35 percent crushed pumice to the potting mix to improve drainage. Containers in part shade need water once or twice a week (more or less, depending on the plants); if they can tolerate full sun, they may need to be watered daily.
© 2010 Tanya Kucak