Designing a Flower Pot

I originally posted this in May 2016 - it's a good tip about how to design a flower pot (remember pillar, filler, spiller?) so I'll share it again. Have you started any pots yet? I need to get busy!



Candy and I took another Wine and Design class from our local nursery, the last one we did in November (click here to see that post) was so much fun but I failed at making my centerpiece look like the instructors haha...I'm happy to report I did much better this time. Candy's of course looked great, she makes it look easy!



For this class we designed a "spring combination pot"; after getting some instruction and advice from the girl leading the class we were sent out into the huge nursery to pick out 7 (4") plants of our choosing - that was hard for me! Normally when I'm going to the nursery I've done planning and research and have a list of exactly what I'm going to get - being sent out to design my pot with no prior planning was stressful. Do I want a pot for the shade? For the sun? Should it be pinks and purples? Red and orange? What was the big center plant going to be - large leaves? Shootie grasses? Oh man I was on the struggle bus - it took me the longest to pick my materials of anyone in class cuz I kept changing my mind. I looked over at Candy and she had a tray full of beautiful plants before I even decided if I was doing shade or sun!

I've taken gardening and flower arranging classes before but I've never heard this "tip" or formula for designing your pot, I even wrote it down so I wouldn't forget and could share it with you. There are 3 types of plants you want to structure your pot correctly - a "pillar" (or "thriller"), a "filler", and a "spiller". For this pot we needed to pick one pillar/thriller, that's the tall or showy plant that goes in the middle of the pot; 4 fillers, those go around the center plant to obviously fill in the pot; and 2 spillers, they are trailing plants to add some interest and dimension to the pot.

For my 14" sun pot I chose a bright green 'Colorblaze Lime Time' Coleus (big leaf plant, not flowering) for my pillar, it will get 18+" tall so will be a nice anchor for the center of the pot once it grows in; 2 bright orange Gerberas will get 10-12" tall, 2 trailing white petunias will get 10" tall and also spill over the sides; one variegated soft leafed plant and one dark green tiny leafed plant for spillers (trailers).

Candy did a shade pot with a very large leaf variegated Coleus as her pillar; begonia and fuchsia for filler; I'm not sure what she used for spiller, looks like an ivy and something else. Pretty!


When choosing plants for container gardening keep in mind you want to use different shapes and textures for leaves and flowers, and also use different colored greens to add interest. You probably don't want the whole pot to be similar leaf shapes and colors, and the same sized flowers - vary it up to add the most interest.

Pillar, Filler, Spiller - this formula is "killer" hahaha!!