COMBINATION PLANTERS: T hri er, F i er, S pi er, S urprise Visitors to our trial garden consistently report that one of the highlights of their visit is viewing our wide variety of custom combinations displayed in pots, baskets, and saddle planters. We typically display around 500 combinations that include a mix of breeder combinations available on the market as well as several hundred custom designed mixes. People appreciate seeing options and getting design inspiration, and it’s especially rewarding for us when customers return from year to year and report that one of our combos was a top seller for them. By Michael DeBerti, Head Grower at Mast Young Plants We use our trial garden to “think outside the box“ in terms of combination design. One of our favorite parts about designing combinations for the trial garden is including designs with unique features that you might not be used to seeing in more traditional annual combos. This year, we took our outside-the-box thinking to both combination design and combination display.
Tropical Twist. We included tropicals in a number of our annual combination planters for a surprise twist not often seen around here. This is a trend more common down south that we were curious about trying in our garden, and we love the unique look tropicals add to annual combos. Foliage Focus. Combining foliage with annuals provides a unique look and focal point. The variety of colors and textures can be used to create a beautiful foliage combo, and also as the coordinating color palette element for the entire combo. Thriller, Filler, Spiller, Surprise Everyone’s familiar with the standard thriller-filler- spiller combo design recipe, and we use this popular design rule of thumb in our combinations as well. In the trial garden, we also like to try out “surprise” varieties as thrillers, fillers, or spillers to add some interest and variety to annual combinations. The 2021 trial garden included a number of combos with some ‘surprise’ elements:
Crotons add height and anchor this combo’s color palette
A foliage combo offers unique textures and colors
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker