May Flowers and More Outdoors

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Now that those April Showers (and a little snow) have gone away, it’s finally planting season! I can hardly wait for the last frost to get my May Flowers planted and blooming. A few lessons in sneaky late April frosts have made me learn the hard way, but it’s always worth the wait.

Let’s peek at some of my first round of planting this May, and more updates from our outdoor space.

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The planting “recipes”

I was unaware, until this year, that there was such a thing as planter recipes, but I am here for it! I spent a lot of time browsing the Proven Winners website and finding the perfect combinations for our planters based on size and sun exposure. You can check out a bunch that I saved on my Pinterest page “The Garden Life”

I love planter gardens for 2 reasons. First, our soil is very hard and clay-like, which does not do well with in-ground plantings. I have struggled to find the correct plants for our yard.

Planters also give me flexibility. If one season or year I want more plants in one area, I am free to do that! I also love the look of bright and colorful planters and think they add an additional design element to any space. That may be three reasons…but regardless, I love planting in planters. Here’s a look at a few that I was going to try this year.

THE Front Porch Entry

The front porch of any home is a great place to make add some curb appeal, and make a first impression to your home. I love adding plants to our front door area in planters, and flowers scattered around the other areas of our front porch.

This year, my goal was to add color to our porch with more flowers in the front door planters. I especially love hydrangeas, so I would give planting them a shot this year.

We have 2 urns that were filled with various ferns over the years. I saw a shade arrangement at our local nursery and was going to try and recreate the look.

Here’s the collection on our porch once I picked up our first load of flowers.

Let’s Get Planting

For the urns, I used all shade plants. This area gets a bit of morning sun, and some late-day sun. I traditionally rotate the urns every week so that they are getting equal amounts of sun, and growth.

Each urn is filled with the recommended “thriller, spiller, and filler” combo. The thriller is caladium in a deep red color. The spiller is ivy. I love how ivy will not only spread but will spill out of the urn after it’s grown for a few weeks. The fillers in these planters are begonias. I chose 2 varieties, sunray, and white wax begonias.

The plants need to fill in a bit, but I can’t wait to see this color combination once they are in full bloom.

The baskets are a new addition. I’ve been seeing them all over Instagram and love the look. I think our porch is the perfect space for some baskets with planters because they will stay dry under our porch.

Each hydrangea is planted in a 10″ plastic planter, and sitting on a plant tray in the basket to keep it from getting wet. I actually pull the plastic planter out when I water the hydrangeas, as well, to keep the basket from getting wet.

Finishing the look

Here is the finished product.

Our front door still has the hearts we taped to the windows over Covid. It still makes me happy to see the hearts our daughter cut out and taped to the glass, but it may be coming down soon as the front door is going to get a makeover.

I MUST have balance, so the decor matches on each side. We have a 3×5 striped rug, and our welcome mat on top. Each side has an urn, basket and later to help frame the doorway.

The Swing ARea

Next to our front porch swing, we have a cute little bench that Rory made, with some planters sitting on it. I keep a few planters here to add some color to this side of the porch, and it also sits under the front window. You can look out and see these flowers.

Here I planted some yellow begonias, white impatiens, and another combo planter. The combination includes lobelia, white impatiens, and a beautiful leafy plant (I have no idea what it is called but love it).

Here is a look at this side of the porch. I also plan to add some ferns once we get them.

The Back Porch

You may remember seeing our empty planters in this post about our backyard outdoor space. I love to fill this space with color, texture, and beautiful planters.

Here’s a look at the haul for the backyard. One thing is certain, I think purple was the color of the year for me in terms of flowers!

There are several areas we put plants on the porch:

The light pole planter
Upper porch planters
Stairs
Lower porch border

The upper porch pole

We took a few tips from the online world, and used a decorative planter for our string light pole. I found a beautiful blue ceramic planter and we set a black painted pipe in the bottom in concrete.

There was room at the top for soil, so I decided to start planting a climbing mandevilla. I have been so happy with how it climbs the pole and nearly reaches the lights every summer. This year I decided to add 2 mandevilla so there will be even more climbing vines!

Here’s a look at the before and after of these being planted. I added a few bamboo stakes to the pot and the mandevilla have already started wrapping around the bamboo and are making their way up!

Upper-Level Planters

The upper portion of our deck has some of my favorite planters. These are both colorful and beautiful planters that I picked up just last year!

I found 2 combination recipes that fit the dimensions and the color scheme I needed.

The smaller blue pot has my favorite plant this year, lavender. This one I picked up from Trader Joe’s for just $6.99! I planted it with catmint.

The larger pot has a combination that I can not wait to see in full bloom! It is filled with chocolate drop coleus, white superbells, and superbena stormburst (such a beautiful blue!)

The Stairs

Our stairs get full sun all day, so I love to fill this spot with some bright sun-loving plants. This year I moved all of my white planters to this area to give it a cohesive look, and let the plants be the main attraction.

There are 2 pots with white impatiens and diamond frost. I chose these specifically to deal with the small pot and the heat. They seem to be loving the spot already!

The large pot on the bottom has a beautiful deep pink tropical plant. I absolutely love the shade of the flowers on this plant!

In the smallest pot I planted a yellow dahlia that my daughter picked out at the plant store “just for me” 💕

The Lower Deck

This is an area we update last summer, and I want to recreate the look. The planers boxes are from Ikea, and create a nice border for our deck since we don’t have a railing. The flowers we had in the planter attracted butterflies and hummingbirds! They would come at the same time every day while we were sitting on the deck relaxing, so we hope they come back again this year!

This is where my love of the purple and white combination is really apparent. We added a tall planter in the middle so we had varying levels and could add MORE flowers.

The boxes have a self-watering box from Target, so it helps keep the plants hydrated in the sunny spot, and helps when we can’t get to watering them every day.

Our lower deck planters are filled with supertunias, wave petunias, superbells, and double petunias, along with 2 varieties of salvia. The tall planter is a combination planter with coleus, superbenia amethyst, and diamond frost.

Round 1 wrap up

That does it for round 1 of our spring planting. We have some plans to make the firepit area a little larger, make a garden by the shed, and make a more defined flower bed area for some perennials next to the deck. Stay tuned for those projects this summer! In the meantime, take one more look at our May flower planting.