The Urns of Darlington: Winter

A well-appointed property includes garden furnishings that help establish and augment the natural beauty and architecture of its grounds. At Darlington we have accumulated a collection of such furnishings that we place around the property with pleasing effect. This includes metal and wooden chairs and benches, sundials, and birdbaths. It also includes a number of large metal urns that we plant with a rotating display of seasonal flora.

The urns on our terrace planted for the winter

We bought our urns from dealers that specialize in selling interesting, large-scale outdoor furnishings and containers. Ours are not old, but rather are recent reproductions from China (or was it India?), made from scrap metal. They look convincing but require additional maintenance and care because they are prone to rusting quickly. That means regular painting.

A number of years ago we decided to paint all of the metal furnishings on our property in the same color paint, and selected Farrow & Ball’s "Off-Black” No. 57. The results are very satisfying but it was quite the task indeed as it included stripping, priming, and painting the seating, birdbath, and four urns and their stands.  It took Boy and me more than a month of weekends devoted to this project to complete it.


We change the contents of our urns every season to display plants that embody the season. In the spring we fill them with masses of violas; in summers we plant blowsy grasses, large succulents, or coleus; in the autumn we usually fill them with chrysanthemums, and one year we crowned the largest ones with enormous pumpkins; in the winter we plant them with evergreens. Every season is different, and we rarely repeat the same planting or color combinations from year to year.

Boy takes charge of selecting what the urns will feature each season, and does the actual planting. This year we bought the winter’s contents from a nursery that we like and that was having a 50%-off end-of-season sale of shrubs, perennials, and trees.

We planted the two large urns on our property with junipers, and the two urns leading up to the door with conical firs. Not exactly heirloom varieties, but handsome nonetheless. Boy was able to plant them ahead of the first of the winter's snow, and they look marvelous when crowned with white caps. 

Here is Reggie’s advice for successful planting of urns:

• Wait until the end-of-season sale at your local nursery to buy shrubs to plant in your urns for the winter, and be sure to plant them before the soil in the urns freezes for the duration; otherwise you'll find yourself chopping out frozen dirt to make way for the shrubs;
• When planting annuals in the spring or summer buy more than you think you’ll need and stuff them in. They’re only going to be in there for the season, so make the most of it;
• Regardless of season, limit the varieties you plant in each urn; plant no more than one or two types of plants in a limited color palette; keep it simple;

And that's how we do it at Darlington. 

What did you plant in your urns this winter?

Photos by Reggie Darling