Thriller, Filler, Spiller!!

Happy Tuesday, friends!  I can’t believe I’ve been so slack about posting lately!  It’s not because I don’t have things to share, it’s just because I’ve been SO busy!  But, while I’m playing catch up, allow me to share my latest urn project.  Come check out my latest thriller, filler, spiller!

A little back story for you.  I’ve had this beautiful urn for about 20 years.  My husband bought it for me when we owned our last home in Doylestown, PA.  We had a lovely swimming pool and this urn sat in the center of the pool in between two lion fountains.  Sadly when we moved we left the lions but I couldn’t bear to leave my urn.  So it came with to NC. Honestly, I wish we could have brought the pool too.

The urn found its new home in NC on the golf course.  And you know the “rule” of planters, you have a thriller, a filler and a spiller.  No explanation needed!  The first year I planted the urn with some pretty flowers and my spiller was ivy.  Over the years, I replaced the “thriller” and “fillers” but left the ivy as the spiller.  Eventually, the ivy took over the entire urn. And boy did it ever! You can’t even tell there is an urn here!

So this year the urn needed a complete overhaul.  I decided to pull out all of the ivy.  Well, it took over an hour and lots of blood, sweat and tears to get the ivy and all of the roots out!  And what’s the saying?  Never, never will I ever?  I will NEVER plant ivy in another urn.  So there.  I said it.  And here’s where I began again.  Sorry for the wonky picture, but isn’t she lovely?

Yesterday I went to Lowe’s to buy the new flowers for my urn.  And I admit I was shocked by how much flowers have gone up in the last year or two!  But, I needed flowers and I was there.  I ended up buying about $200 worth of flowers for the urn as well as some for the little window boxes in the Secret Garden.  Each of the quart sized flowers were about $5.98.  Good grief!  And  I needed a lot,

Anyway, for the thriller I bought a pink Mandevilla for about $30.  I put the Mandevilla towards the back in the center.  And since it loves to climb, I added a wire obelisk on top of it.  I’ll show that later.

Lowe’s was also out of sweet potato vine which I wanted for my spiller, so I ended up going to our local produce stand and they had 5 left.  So I bought those for $6 each too.  Yikes.  But, I needed them and added them to the perimeter of my urn. These are fast growers and surprisingly  grow actual potatoes under the soil.  I love their light green foliage.

For my filler, I added some petunias in light pink, and dark pink.  I also added some million bells in yellow to coordinate with the yellow in my wreaths on the front porch.  The yellow million bells (or calibrachoa) came in a larger container so I divided it into three parts and distributed it in the urn.   And I threw in a few lobelias in white. I also added 3 white wave petunias to also count as spillers.

In total I had 3 wave petunias, 8 Supertuias, 1 mandevilla, 5 sweet potato vines and 3 lobelias.

Once I was finished planting everything, I wrapped the drip line from our sprinkler system all around the urn tucking the line underneath the flowers.  This comes in handy in the hot summer months so I don’t need to water every day.  I do supplement the flower with food about every other week to ensure healthy growth.  And petunias do requite a bit of maintenance.  I deadhead the spent blooms frequently.  (Kind of a pain.)

So here’s how the urn currently looks!  Yes, I do tend to over plant.  I yearn for instant gratification, what can I say?  However, it will fill in quickly and be gorgeous in no time!  I’ll try to remember and post pictures of the mature urn. My hope is that in a month’s time it will be lush and beautiful.  Just in time for my darling nieces’ baby shower!  And I’ll be sure to post plenty of pictures of that too!  It’s going to be a gender neutral shower, since they don’t want to know the sex of the baby until he/she arrives.  How fun!  Here’s a look at the urn in its current state.  It’s piled with lots of pink flowers for me and a little yellow as a nod to my dear Mother.  It’s her favorite color!  I love you Mom!  Happy early Mother’s Day!

So, until next time, thank you for being here!  I have some fun new (and easy) recipes to share soon!  Have a great day!

Hugs, Dell