Window box

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A window box (window flower box or window box planter) is a type of container for live plants growing in a box-like structure attached on, or slightly below, a window sill. The plants might be grown for flowers, herbs, food, or fondness for nature.

Quotes

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  • I started the window box project in autumn and focused on hardy plants that would be attractive over winter. I mixed delicate white cyclamens with hebe and carex grass in one trough, and planted an array of winter salad leaves including land cress and mizuna in another. It all looked lovely for a good while. But I confess the carex is currently half dead and the cyclamens decidedly unwell. The salads that weren't eaten have grown legs and gone to seed. After a winter thinking about medicinal plants, food growing, urban wildlife and permaculture, it's time for an overhaul using my new knowledge.
  • In London and all large towns gardening has its trials. ... One or two alternatives are open to us; one is the Window-box, another is the Roof-garden, and there is the Balcony.
    The windox-box is both the easiest and the most general, but, common as are these town adornments, it is a matter of fact that very little "gardening" is done in them. For the most part the man in the street gest as much æsthetic enjoyment out of a window-box as its owner, and often, except in the matter of payment, has about as much to do with it. The lordly mansions, in front of which are displayed the most beautiful colour-schemes during the fashionable season, are often closed at other periods of the year, while their owners are away enjoying flowers in distant plaes. It is of the window-gardening of that far larger class that lives in London all the year round we would say a word or two. Window-gardening might become ten times more interesting than it is now if people only woke up to a sense of its possibilities.
  • Round cheese-boxes, powder-blue boxes, fancy soap-boxes, or any similar moderate-sized boxes, make good window-gardens, and can be bought at any grocer's shop for a few pence. They look pretty painted green. Take care not to buy very large boxes, as they are so heavy to move. Window-boxes and pots should never be placed down flat, as then no fresh air can pass up through the holes at the bottom of the box or pot, unless the stand on which they are placed is made of rails like a plate-rack. In the greenhouses at Kew I notices that cockle-shells were broken up into small pieces and placed under the pots that stood on flat shelves; cockle-shells can easily be got, and look very clean and pretty. When pots are allowed to stand in saucers filled with water, air cannot possibly get to the roots, and the earth about them may therefore become mouldy.
  • Window boxes well filled with suitable plants are a great attraction to any house, and to a great extent help to beautify that which would otherwise be a plain and uninteresting front without the cheering presence of flowers. It is strange that so few, comparatively speaking, take so little interest in this form of gardening, especially when it can be so cheaply done. Many a sombre-looking building might be made bright with window boxes well furnished with luxuriant plants full of flower during the summer months. The plants usually seen devoted to this purpose comprise but a small portion of subjects that might be used with effect, generally consisting of Maguerites, Geraniums, and Lobelia. These, although very attractive, and lasting in flower for a long period, might be supplemented by many other graceful and interesting plants to give a greater variety. With a little arrangement a most interesting garden, occupying but a small space, might be made, which would contain something of interest the whole year round.

See also

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