Growing Fuchsias in Pots, Tubs and Baskets
How to Grow Fuchsia Flowers and Foliage in Containers
Aug 4, 2009
Some trail over the edges of walls, others provide the focal point in a border. A few can even be grown for their fantastic leaf colour and most will flower from early summer through to autumn - and beyond in mild areas.
Yes, the fuchsia is perhaps the garden plant that packs the biggest punch and offers the best value for money. It's been intensively bred for nearly 200 years and thousands of varieties have been created to please just about everyone's tastes. Even so, the simpler species are sometimes the most beautiful.
Have a nose round a friend's garden and ask if you can take a few cuttings, or visit one of the many open under the National Gardens Scheme in the UK and you're bound to find a few examples grown as summer bedding in pots, troughs, tubs and hanging baskets. They make loads of growth once the weather warms up and quickly come into flower, so are ideal for boosting colour on the patio and on a wall.
Fuchsias for Containers
Before you dash off to the garden centre to pick up a few, you need to know which types are suitable for which container. If you're going for a variety - and that's what you'll find most of - you'll have a choice of bush or trailing types. Bush are either upright or lax in habit. The latter are best for hanging baskets and have more of an arching, graceful habit than a true point-straight-at-the-ground nature. They also work quite well around the edges of broad containers, such as troughs; frosty orange 'Amazing Maisie', white and pale pink ‘Hidcote Beauty' and deep purple and red ‘Roesse Blacky' are brilliant examples.
Upright fuchsias work well at the centre of a container, where they'll bush out with strong, erect growth. But what really sets them off is an underplanting of pale foliage such as Helichrysum petiolare. Dark-flowered varieties of fuchsia such as 'Gruss aus dem Bodethal' and 'Dorothy' work well in this situation, but 'Checkerboard', 'Pacquesa' and 'Carmel Blue' also come highly recommended.
Compost for Fuchsias
If you intend to keep the plants in the same container for more than a year, use a soil-based compost such as John Innes No.3. It's the best choice for long-term growing of fuchsias but will also make your containers significantly heavier than loam-free mixtures.
The latter are ideal for hanging baskets - putting less strain on the bracket and you - but their structure breaks down after a year and drainage and fertiliser content becomes a problem. Baskets and other smaller containers tend to dry out quickly in hot, sunny weather so you may want to add some water-retaining gel/crystals to the compost before planting.
Whatever you choose, it's important that the plants get a sunny or semi-shady aspect. Regular watering during hot weather is essential - twice a day if in hanging baskets - and you'll need to feed with a tomato fertiliser once a week from midsummer to keep the flowers coming.
A prodigious amount of stem growth is key to a succession of flowers and a bushy habit, but it won't happen all by itself. Once plants shoot into growth in spring and the plant is about 3-4in. (7-10cm) high, you need to remove the growing tip. Then regularly pinch out sideshoots to encourage a dense habit. You can stop once the first set of flower buds have formed but it's better to carry on until you've achieved roughly the shape you want and delay flowering a little.
Fuchsia Origins
Fuchsias were discovered in South America and New Zealand, where they grow wild. These species have quite different flowers to the cultivated types - some long and thin, others small and fat with protruding stigma - and a few, such as F. magellanica and the unusual F. procumbens, with green-yellow, upright-pointing flowers and a prostrate habit, are tolerant of some frost; F. magellanica can often be seen growing as a shrub in gardens in the south-west of England.
Not so wild are the cultivated triphylla varieties. Their long, thin flowers are borne in clusters and have a more 'regal' air to them - they certainly work well when planted in a tall terracotta urn, where their architectural magnificence can be shown off to its maximum. Crimson 'Mary', peach 'Coralle' and the popular orange-red 'Thalia' are among the best.
Variegated Leaves
Fuchsias excel in showing us how well they can flower, and there's no harm in that, but there are a varieties that have the added bonus of leaf colour. Many of the triphyllas already mentioned usually have a purple sheen to the underside of their leaves, but 'Firecracker' has a mixture of rich salmon and pale green variegation to accompany the clusters of rich pink flowers.
'Sunray' is a late-flowerer, which is great, because it gives you plenty of time to ogle the cream, pink and green leaves borne on pink stems. The youngest leaves have the strongest pink tinges and the flowers, when they do appear, are pinkish-violet.
But the best has to be 'Autumnale', which doesn't, as the name suggests, save its best until the autumn. It stays as a low mound and its yellow-green leaves turn a rich, coppery crimson as they age. Flowers are rose-purple and are produced in late summer. It's a spectacular show and one you really need to make space for in your garden.
 |
 |
