FEATURE: Stone urns

Shortly after we moved in, I found two weather beaten cast stone urns in a salvage yard. Not exactly the same colour, but the same size and shape. I put them by the pond. I think I originally put alyssums and annual flowers in them, and it didn't quite look right. I then tried pink Paris daisies, which were fine to begin with, but then became too upright and looked out of place. The next year I tried some alpines, but they didn't really succeed.

Finally, last year I dug them out and found that despite all the stone I had put in the base, they were sitting in water. So I used a masonry drill to drill a large hole in the centre of the bottom of each bowl, replaced the stones and soil and filled them with alpines again; pink, white and yellow.

Although I only used four plug plants in each one, this year they look better than ever before. For a month, there were white golf ball shaped flowers all around the edges, the yellow sedum trailed down the side, and now they are carpeted with pink alpines. In 9 months or so, the plugs have grown to take over the whole urn top, and best of all (unlike the annuals previously planted) they need no maintenance and will come back every year.