Glazed ceramic pots in a wintry northern garden need to be protected from the freezing rain and snow. You can cover them with a tarp, in which case you stare at what looks like a deceased pot all winter. Add a chalk line and police tape and you have the full visual effect of a crime scene. Nice.
Another option is to drag them into the garage. Which, using our dead body analogy, is the equivalent of dragging a stiff, heavy corpse. I stopped that nonsense when my back and I celebrated our 45th birthday with spinal injections.
A few years ago I came up with a way to enjoy a glazed pot in the winter garden without the work. As long as there is no dirt to freeze in the pot, it holds up just fine. Instead of flowers and dirt, I filled a glazed pot with packing peanuts and topped it with a circle of landscape fabric cut to size. On top of the fabric I arranged decorative glass.
I used vase-filler glass from a craft store, but you can also buy sheets of glass tiles at Home Depot or Lowe’s in your favorite colors. Tear the tiles off the sticky backing and scatter them on top – just enough so you can’t see the landscape fabric. Water drains right through. (Make sure your pot has a hole in the bottom.) Any water that does get trapped and freezes, expands and contracts the spongy packing peanuts so your pot won’t crack. Bright ceramic pots can bring color to an otherwise gray winter landscape.
Now that I have a Florida garden, I can finally collect all the glazed pots I want. My blue pot count stands at 7. Here’s a nice little group of 5.
My husband Jeff finds our first blue pot.
The top of a bird bath sits on the ground next to Heuchera ‘Margarita’.
In the Ohio garden, the blue bowl (lower right) is my favorite. I fill it with water and float flowers in it all summer long. It takes two of us to bring it in the house for winter. It’s the one pot that’s worth the effort. The blue of Baptisia ‘False Indigo’ blooms on the opposite side of the patio. It comes closest to matching the blue ceramic glaze.
Kumquats. Orange is opposite blue on the color wheel. A great color combination.
