The Front Porch
Your Official Home Welcoming

Your front porch is the main reception area for your home. Make the most of it.

You can easily accentuate this welcoming with colorful containers of annuals.

You can also fill your window boxes with beautiful shrub roses or any number of small perennials.

Here are some tips to help you create your display

Dispose your containers in a group for a mass effect, or highlight a smaller space with a single specimen. Either way, you will be delighted with this simple approach to create a beautiful display of color on your front porch.

Gardening with containers makes it possible to easily vary your color scheme. As each plant finishes flowering, you can replace it with another container. You can choose to harmonize or contrast your colors and add variety in the height of each plant.

For additional contrast, the shape and texture of the leaves will add variety. Tall strap-like leaves will give a good vertical background to low-growing, wide-leaved plants.

Choose plants with a long flowering season, and have others of a different type ready to replace them as they finish blooming.

Be Creative, Experiment with Containers.

You could use an old porcelain bowl or a copper urn, or perhaps you'd rather make something really unique with wood or tiles.

If you decide to buy your containers, terracotta pots look wonderful but tend to absorb water. If you don’t want your plants to dry out, paint the interior of these pots with a special sealer available from hardware stores.

If you purchase cheaper plastic pots, you can paint them on the outside with water-based paints for good effect. Don't forget to buy matching saucers to catch the drips. This will save cement floors from getting stained or wooden floors from rotting.

Always use a good quality potting mix in your containers. This will ensure the best performance possible from your plants.

Be Creative, Try Different Arrangements

If you have steps leading up to your front door, an attractive container plant on each step will create a cozy and welcoming atmosphere that will delight your visitors.

Decide ahead of time where you want your containers to be positioned, and buy plants to fit the environment. There is no point buying sun lovers for a shady position for they will not do well. Some plants have really large roots, so they are best kept for the open garden.

If you have plenty of space at your front door, a group of potted plants off to one side will be more visually appealing than two similar plants placed on each side. Unless they are spectacular, they will look rather boring.

Group the containers in odd numbers rather than even, and vary the height and type of plants. To tie the group together, you can add large rocks that are similar in appearance and just slightly different in size. Three or five containers of the same type and color, but in different sizes will also look effective.

With a creative mind and some determination, your front porch will soon be the envy of friends and strangers alike.