Container garden inspiration from our readers
With another gardening season just around the corner, container gardens are probably already on your mind! Half the fun is trying out new plant combinations or swapping in something fresh each season. The other half? Checking out the creative ideas other gardeners have come up with —because a little inspiration can spark some big ideas of your own.
Thanks to everyone who submitted an entry in the 2026 Container Challenge, and congratulations to our winners! With so many fantastic designs, we wanted to shine a spotlight on a handful of honorable mentions that stood out as well. Browse these top entries, and you’re sure to find one (or several!) that will inspire new plants, colors, or design ideas for your containers this year.
Read More: Get Inspired by Our 2026 Container Challenge Winners!
2026 Container Challenge Honorable Mentions
Wonderful Windowbox
Michelle & Paul Frati, NY | @pardonandmirth
After moving to a new home, Michelle and Paul were looking for a way to stretch their limited garden budget. So they shopped sales and looked for perennials and shrubs in smaller nursery pots that could do double duty. First they created a cool-color combo to fill their self-watering windowbox. Then when the growing season was over, the hydrangeas, astilbe and coral bells went in the ground to help fill the borders of their new garden. The Endless Summer hydrangeas bloomed off and on from planting until frost, and the long-lasting astilbe flowers created an interesting accent even after they faded.
The house faces north, so the windowbox gets a few hours of morning sun and they only need to fill the reservoir about every two weeks, even during the heat of summer. Because it’s made of resin, the Fratis leave the planter in place in their zone 5 region with no worries.
Key container plants
A) Astilbe Astilbe ‘Happy Spirit’
B) Coral bells Heuchera ‘Wildberry’
C) Bigleaf hydrangea Hydrangea macrophylla Endless Summer®
D) Creeping Jenny Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’
E) Lobelia Lobelia erinus
Windowbox is 11 in. deep x 11 in. wide x 60 in. long
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Part-Shade Patio Container Solution
Camille McElroy, TN | @catmintcoop
Looking for just the right container plants for a part-shade patio in zone 8, Camille created this great-looking group. While there are a few annuals in it, her design makes good use of the foliage color and texture that shrubs and perennials, such as coral bells, lamb’s ear and paperbush, provide. The stairstep containers are made of cast concrete and stay outdoors all year. The shrubs and perennials also stay in the pots year-round and often last for several years. Once they start looking tired, they’re moved out to the garden.
Even though the containers are large, Camille doesn’t use fillers, such as rock, Styrofoam™ or cans, in the bottom to reduce the amount of potting mix needed. This technique has blocked the drainage hole in the past, causing rot or even cracked pots over winter. Instead, she fills them about a third full of bark mulch, then tops it off with potting mix. This works especially well for shrubs or perennials, but if all the plants going in the pot are shallow-rooted annuals, she can add a bit more mulch.
Key container plants
A) Abelia Abelia x grandiflora ‘Kaleidoscope’
B) Foam flower Tiarella ‘Sugar and Spice’
C) Creeping Jenny Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’
D) Coral bells Heuchera ‘Palace Purple’
E) Coral bells Heuchera ‘Plum Pudding’
F) Paperbush Edgeworthia chrysantha
G) Coral bells Heuchera ‘Fire Alarm’
H) Lamb’s ear Stachys byzantina
I) Foxtail fern Asparagus densiflorus ‘Meyersii’
J) Dichondra Dichondra argentea ‘Silver Falls’
K) Bacopa Chaenostoma cordatum ‘Snowflake’
Large container is 38 in. tall x 30 in. wide
Medium container is 21 in. tall x 20 in. wide
Small container is 20 in. tall x 18 in. wide
Classic Curb Appeal
Marie Herbert, MI
Coleus and impatiens are some of Marie’s favorite plants, so it was natural for her to fill these concrete urns with them, creating a colorful greeting for visitors at her north-facing front door last year.
This combination didn’t need a lot of care, but Marie kept an eye on the Kong coleus because, true to its name, it can get pretty big — up to 20 inches tall. If any stems grew out of proportion with the planting, she cut them back along with any flowers that formed. If dichondra sends out a stray stem, it’s easy to snip it off to maintain the neat and tidy look essential for eye-catching curb appeal.
Key container plants
A) Coleus Coleus scutellarioides Kong® Rose
B) New Guinea impatiens Impatiens hawkeri Painted Paradise Orange
C) Dichondra Dichondra argentea ‘Silver Falls’
Container is 40 in. tall x 23 in. wide
Enter Garden Gate’s 2027 Reader Container Challenge!
Submit photos of your best container gardens, and we’ll choose our favorites to feature in a future issue of Garden Gate Magazine. The containers can be any size, season or style! See full entry rules here.
Pretty in Pink
Heather Markway, MO | @lifegardenstyle
This corner only gets an hour or two of sunlight each day, making it a challenge to grow plants there. So Heather nestled this lovely urn filled with colorful shade annuals into the corner where her sunporch meets the house.
The iron-framed urn needed a coir liner to hold in the potting mix, but its unusual shape made it necessary for Heather to get creative. She used an ordinary hanging basket liner at the base of the urn, then cut a sheet of coir to cover the “walls” of the urn.
With a tall caladium as the thriller, begonias and sedge as the filler and dichondra as the spiller, this classic container formula couldn’t be prettier or easier to care for. Besides watering, all Heather had to do to keep it tidy was occasionally tug off a spent begonia bloom or trim a stray dichondra stem. If the begonia gets too tall and competes too much with the caladium, just cut it back by a third. New compact growth will take off in a few weeks.
Key container plants
A) Caladium Caladium bicolor ‘Bottle Rocket’
B) Begonia Begonia Dragon Wing® Pink
C) Sedge Carex oshimensis ‘Everillo’
D) Browallia Browallia Endless™ Illumination
E) Dichondra Dichondra argentea ‘Silver Falls’
Container is 30 in. tall x 16 in. wide
Bold & Beautiful Planter
Summer Bryan, GA| @petals_of_summer
With a west-facing front porch in Georgia where temperatures easily reach 100 degrees F and higher, Summer needed a group of plants that could take the tough growing conditions. This collection of heat lovers fit the bill. She placed the tall papyrus toward the back of the pot, where it supplies plenty of elegant drama. Then she added a bright red geranium and begonias, orange coleus and chartreuse creeping Jenny for eye-catching color. It’s perfect for drawing visitors over to sit on the porch. The blue glazed container cools the hot colors down a bit and coordinates with the dark siding.
Summer keeps plants happy through the heat with drip irrigation held in place with landscape pins. She makes sure to position the emitters so they’re watering at soil level instead of splashing the leaves, in order to avoid fungal disease in her densely planted pots.
Key container plants
A) Papyrus Cyperus papyrus King Tut®
B) Begonia Begonia Dragon Wing® Red
C) Mealycup sage Salvia farinacea
D) Verbena Verbena hybrid
E) Bacopa Chaenostoma cordatum
F) Creeping Jenny Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’
G) Geranium Pelargonium hybrid
H) Coleus Coleus scutellarioides ‘Alabama Sunset’
I) Evolvulus Evolvulus hybrid
Container is 30 in. tall x 24 in. wide
See Previous Year’s Container Challenge Winners:
2026 Winners
2025 Winners
2024 Winners
2023 Winners
Pollinator Paradise
Sue Cashman, WI | @sue.cashman.167
This big resin container is packed with colorful flowers and was one of Sue’s favorites last year—and the neighborhood hummingbirds liked it too! It sits in a hot, dry spot in full sun, which is just what lantanas love, but marguerite daisies can struggle there. Fortunately, Golden Butterfly is more heat tolerant than older varieties so made it through Sue’s Wisconsin summer just fine. Deadheading its yellow blooms isn’t essential, but she snipped out fading ones to keep it looking tip-top.
Sue liked this design so much that she packed the canna bulbs away last fall to overwinter so she can bring them out in spring and grow this combo again.
Key container plants
A) Canna Canna x generalis Cannova® Red Golden Flame
B) Marguerite daisy Argyranthemum Golden Butterfly®
C) Lantana Lantana Luscious® Citrus Blend™
D) Lantana Lantana Bandana® Black Cherry
Container is 22 in. tall x 16 in. wide
Prizes for 2026’s Container Challenge Honorable Mentions
This year’s Garden Gate Container Challenge Honorable mentions received a $50 gift card from Garden Crossings and a one-year subscription or extension to Garden Gate magazine.
