This is a month late and the pot in question is not strictly visible from my front window. Well, it is, but only in the way property particulars describe a room as having a sea view that is only actually visible if you hang from the window in a precarious manner.

Every time I go in to or out of the house I think I should do something about the container by the front door. When I moved here twenty years ago I brought cuttings of a beautiful hibiscus I had had in my previous garden. One was planted in this pot, the other directly in the soil. It’s not hard to see which plant is happier. The container is large but it is sheltered by the house so it only gets moisture if the rain is falling at the correct angle. A few years ago I stupidly made the problem even worse by adding an agapanthus to the pot. It looked great with the blue flowers on their long stalks against the pinky-mauve hibiscus flowers but this year the hibiscus has simply refused to flower. The roots of the agapanthus are now growing up through the surface as they clearly have nowhere else to go. After the heatwave and thunderstorms of August  a spell of reasonably gentle weather was forecast and I decided that, even though early autumn isn’t the ideal time, I needed to do something quickly before the hibiscus died.

When I finally got the plants out of the pot the problem was clear; it wasn’t a container of soil with plants it was a solid mass of roots, unfortunately completely entwined.

 

 

Some fairly vicious hacking and I had a hibiscus and four rooted bits of agapanthus. A drink, some new compost and a few quiet days and they are all looking surprisingly happy. The hibiscus has its own, spacious container, the front door pot now has a (small) escallonia, a manageable hardy geranium and some bulbs for spring and I have a hedge of agapanthus.

Jane