Container garden

A container garden is a residential garden where the homeowner's collection of plants is grown in pots, tubs, pans, bottles, tanks, baskets and a wide variety of other specially-designed or improvised holders. Many people in the developed world own a houseplant or two; a container garden implies a collection, or several collections of different types of plants, grouped together in one or more specific areas. Container gardening allows people to bring part of nature into their living spaces. One can grow plants not native to one's own country or climate, and growing in containers minimizes problems of plant pests and diseases, or at least makes these easier to control. The problem of weeding is virtually eliminated in the container garden. One can also grow fruit, herbs, vegetables and flowers out of season using containers.

History of container gardening

Humans have been container gardening for hundreds of years. An early example is the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The accepted story is that Amytis of Media, Nebuchadnezzar's wife missed the gardens of her homeland so much that she pined for them. The king had special gardens built for her. By ancient accounts these were huge, terraced gardens, large enough to contain trees, but as they were artificially created, lined troughs, with topsoil and irrigation brought in, one can argue that they were massive container gardens.