Is the patio in your garden in need of a revamp? Here are 9 easy ways to transform your patio displays, without having to break the bank or your back!

Pay attention to container displays and choose the right plants with these simple tips, and you can transform your patio in no time. These simple but effective tips will help make it a bright, interesting and vibrant place to do some alfresco dining, relax and read a book, and even do some gardening!

These quick and easy tips will help you transform your patio…

Give long term containers a spring pick-me-up

Container displays that stay the same in the garden each year can take on a new lease of life if you give them a seasonal twist. Shrubs in pots can look sad and lonely on a patio, so spice things up by underplanting them with some spring-flowering plants such as bellis, primroses or cheerful blue-flowered perennial pulmonaria. Repeat the trick in autumn with cyclamen, heathers, Nerine bowdenii and late-flowering pansies.

Treat squeezed plants to a bigger pot

Plants that have been in the same-sized pot on the patio for two or three years are probably desperate to ‘up-size’. If a plant’s roots have filled the space available, then there is a good chance that the plant will have exhausted the nutrients in the compost. It will also be desperate for water, so moving the plant to a larger pot will mean having to spend less time watering. Choose a new pot up to half as wide again as the current pot and up to half as deep again. Use a soil-based John Innes compost.

Mix and match your pots

Think of the pots on your patio in the same way as furniture in the house and move them around to make different use of the space that you have. If some plants are looking especially good, make sure you display them somewhere where they stand out and can be enjoyed. And move plants around to see which ones go together well to create an eyecatching scene. Make sure you don’t move plants out of their preferred environments  (moving to sun instead of shade, for example) for too long, but a few days won’t hurt.

Choose plants with a long season of interest

If space on the patio is limited and there isn’t room for many pots in your space, make sure you choose plants that look good for a long time. It will help your patio look vibrant for longer. Try evergreen shrub Nandina domestica which displays many colours through its leaves as the seasons change. Or try Hebe ‘Pink Elephant’, a tough little variegated evergreen that displays pink and red colouring on its leaves as well as being covered in white blooms in summer.

Use containers for plants that won’t grow in the borders

Unfortunately the soil in your garden won’t be suitable for every plant. Acid-loving plants will struggle if you have alkaline soil and will take up lots of your time. If they still end up dying, it can be enough to put some people off gardening altogether. A simple remedy if you want to grow plants that aren’t suited to your soil is to grow them in containers. Use a mix of ericaceous compost and lime-free soil-based compost to grow acid-lovers such as pieris, azaleas, rhododendrons, skimmias and blueberries.

Brighten up a dull, shady corner

Empty, shady corners of the patio don’t have to just be places where slippery moss grows and old clutter is stored. It is the perfect environment for creating a lush and leafy corner. Try the many varieties of hosta, Japanese maples, hollies or the jungly-looking shrub Fatsia japonica. And some bleeding hearts (dicentra), astrantia, astilbe and rodgersia, all flower in shade to provide extra interest.

Inject each container display with extra plant food

If plants growing in containers just don’t look like the picture on the plant label, they may well be hungry. Multi-purpose composts only contain enough nutrients to feed plants for a few weeks and after that they will be relying on you. A simple way to make sure that plants in pots get enough food is to push controlled-release fertiliser tablets into the compost. These tablets release nutrients over a long period, with one application lasting for up to six months.

Create a better background for your pots

A clean, colourful and uncluttered backdrop can transform the look of a group of potted plants. Try painting a wall or fence in a new colour – or just give wooden surfaces a new coat of woodstain – for your plants to stand out in front of. Look at the plants that you have on your patio and think of a colour that will complement them or help them stand out.

Add mulch for a finishing touch

Bare compost may show that you are adept at pulling out weeds but lots of it on show never makes a patio look as good as it could be. Finish your patio displays by spreading a  layer of decorative mulch over the compost surface to hide it. Just make sure you leave a gap between the top of the mulch and the top of the pot, so that it doesn’t spill over the top when you water.