5 Tips for Charming Flowers Window Boxes

Revitalise the ambiance in your space with fresh flowers. But don’t limit yourself to bunches and bouquets set in vases. Think outside the box – or inside. Make use of the window boxes in your home and fill them with blooms and plants bursting with colour and life. Those container boxes attached to your walls are an extension of your home and by giving them just a little bit more attention, you’d be surprised to see them actually drawing lots of attention. 

Lily's Florist has prepared these tips to help you step up your floral décor indoors and outdoors. Plant blooms and foliage into those boxes attached to your windows and level up your gardening game.    

1. Planting by Season

Choose lavender for a coloured and scented summer. Begonias, mums, dahlias, daisies, and pansies are your best autumn-blooming picks. Autumn is also the right time to bury bulbs in between your other plants for a wonderful spring surprise. For winter-flowering plants, expect to create an evergreen window box with elegant pops of colour. Imagine a bed of white cyclamen and variegated ivy, with winter pansies and narcissus daffodils.

2. Shaded Beauties

If your window box does not get direct sunshine, opt for plants that thrive in the shade like lily of the valley, Australian native violets, and snowdrops. You can also go for plants with interesting foliage like coleus, maidenhair ferns, and variegated ivy. For more information read our recent post on Caring For Native Flowers.

3. Edibles on Your Balcony

Fresh herbs within easy reach? You can literally do it. Grow an edible garden just outside your kitchen window and reach your arm out to pick greens for your salad or garnishes for your meals. Rosemary, basil, sage, mint, thyme, parsley, and chives are suitable for window boxes. You can also plant mini pepper plants and vining cherry tomatoes.

4. Maintain Balance

Symmetry can double the impact of window boxes. So, for duos or trios of window planters permanently affixed to one wall, better use the same plants (variety and colour) for every box to avoid an off-balanced look.

Keep the colour and texture minimal if your property has plenty of window boxes, say four or five in one wall or trios in two. To do this, select plants to one or two to three (maximum) varieties. You can pick one flower in two to three colour variations but make sure you plant the same blooms in every window box for a tone-down and still symmetrical look.

5. Play But Don’t Forget Scale

Ever heard of thriller-filler-spiller? Thriller pertains to tall statement-making plants that are ideally planted towards the box of a container or window box. Fillers are what give volume to the container so they’re planted midline in the planter. Spillers cascade or spill or trail over the planter’s edges so they must be planted on the front or the sides of a container or the window box. You can use this concept to play with the look of your window box and create depth, dimension and drama, but still keep scale and proportion in mind.