Much like one gallon gardening, 4 inch gardening is based on budgetary constraints.
To maximize my precious garden dollars, I often buy 4 inch annuals that have the potential to drop seeds and sow a new crop for me next year like this lovely (Linaria maroccana), a wildflower also known as Moroccan toadflax or mini snapdragons. I like how it looks next to my 'Red Sails' lettuce, a 4 inch vegetable transplant.
Just as some folks grow things they remember from their grandmother's garden, I love to grow plants that I learned about at Wave Hill, the beautiful public garden where I used to work. There, we had a sweet little self-sowing white and yellow (Linaria vulgaris) known by the common name: butter and eggs!
Bluebonnets (Lupinus texinsis), notoriously difficult to start from seed, are available in 4 inch pots in fall at NHG. For a little over a buck per plant, I get lovely foliage and the state flower of Texas blooming in spring. At that point, I'm satisfied, but if it also throws some seed around and reappears in the future, I'd be thrilled.
Notice in the upper background of this shot, baby seedlings of another wonderful Wave Hill plant, Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damescena) dropped at random by a plant orginially purchased in a 4 inch container last spring. Talk about getting your money's worth!
Zinnia 'Profusion Orange' planted in early summer, sprawled out to beautify a large area, while harmonizing with copper plant (Acalypha sp.), orange Wallflower (Erysimum sp.) and Dinosaur kale (Brassica oleracea). There is even a little Salvia leucantha 'Midnight' sticking up above the kale on the left. You guessed it! All grown from 4 inch.
Zinnia linearis was also gorgeous from June until December.
Sometimes a perennial like this Salvia farinacea 'Victoria', is sold as a 4 inch annual due to it's dwarf size which groups well with other bedding plants.
It blooms continuously and looks pretty along with other blues planted in the fall, but it also returns from the roots each year. A bargain hunter's dream!
Many people just use 4 inch material for color. Ornamental cabbage grow quickly if you plant them in early fall. Pentas complemented them until a freeze in December. Now rosy wine colored violas maintain a bit of a pink color scheme in front of my flowering quince shrub.
These orange violas attempt to blend in my new pink (not apricot), Apricot Drift Rose, an impulse purchase which looked more peachy in the garden center. Silver accent plants like Dusty Miller (Senecio bicolor subsp. cineraria) 'New Look' help too and will grow fat and lovely with time.
Of course you can start groundcover from 4 inch pots. When folks at NHG ask me — how many do I need? I say that it depends on your need for instant gratification. It takes most groundcover about 3 years to really establish and begin expanding.
Iceland poppies (Papaver nudicale) get planted in my garden as soon as they arrive in stock, usually in October. They live through our winter blooming occasionally, but the real show is in spring. I love poppies so much, I don't care that these don't perennialize or sow themselves. I must have poppies!
