I am on a mission to improve my home’s curb appeal.  It is not a bad looking house, but it is definitely lacking some oomph.  This is going to be a multi step process.  I already have a great chair set with a table.  All three pieces need to be freshened up a bit.  The front door needs to be replaced.  Both the entry door and the storm door are all wrong for the house and both of them have some functionality issues as well.  They probably won’t be replaced until next spring or summer, so I am concentrating on the seating area for now.  The seating area could use a bit of color.  I am starting with some pots planted with annuals.

I was on the look out for a set of square pots to flank the entry.  My ideal pot would have been a paneled style at least 18″ wide in black, to echo the shape, texture and color of my shutters.  I had found a couple that I liked, but I was too hesitant to order anything expensive from a catalog without being able to see the quality in person.   Everything I saw locally was round.  I had my heart set on square.  This always happens to me.  I get the vision of what I want and I just can’t shake it.  I search high and I search low and then I get really frustrated.  I am working on trying to be more flexible in an effort to get projects completed.  June was coming to an end.  How long was I going to wait to plant flowers, for crying out loud?

One day I was walking through Lowes and spotted these bad boys on clearance for $15 each.  I could buy the two planters that I would need and the soil and the flower and still spend less than what it would cost for one of the fancy models that I had seen in catalogs.  They only had 2 left in stock.  I snapped them up.  The next day when the Hubs was at another location, he spotted more and called to ask if I wanted a third planter.  Sure, why not?  So now what do I do with the third planter?

Place one in front of each pillar?

I loved the way the planters looked in front of each pillar.  They would catch some rain water that way too, leaving less work for me.  It looked quite nice also.  In the end, the door area was just too bare.  I stuck with the original plan and placed one planter in front of the farthest pillar, near the seating area.  I can always move them and I still may.  We’ll see what happens with the door.  I have some ideas for that project that I won’t get into here.

Here is the front door with the two planters flanking the entry.

Here is the seating area with the pot all planted and lovely.

The previous owners already had a lot of purple flowers in the front beds.  The color is quite a nice contrast against the red of the brick.  Since it was late June when all of this went down, the selection at the nursery was limited.  I had intended to get a deeper, bluer viola, but they were all gone.  I chose purple pansies and chartreuse coleus for a pop of color and to keep a cool color scheme.  I have never been very impressed by coleus before, but I have a new appreciation for its simplicity.

The planters have filled in more now that the plants have grown and I added some of those spiky salvia from the $5 flower flat I purchased last week.  The salvia added some needed contrast in height and color.  I really like the way that this combination looks. The plants still need to fill out a bit, this might even become my signature look.