Gardeners make choices based on lots of issues, but most can figure out what appeals to them straight off. Some love old crusty, rusty and well worn antiques; others find that state of gentle disrepair lacks visual punch. Many antique urns have been painted at one time or another; white having been a very popular color. Worn white will either be just the thing, or seem jarring. For others, the prospect of a classical urn leaves them cold-old or new. But if the idea of an urn resonates with you, which you will choose depends on several things.
Dry cast limestone urns are usually based on classical handcarved limestone designs dating back hundreds of years. Many of those designs are European in origin. Dry cast limestone is a process by which limestone dust is mixed with a binder, and poured into molds. These reproductions are much more affordable than their antique counterparts. Some old designs would not be available at all, but for a reproduction. On occasion I find a piece I feel I must have, with no placement in mind. But a classical European urn may be very much out of place in front of a Cape Cod home. Now would these elaborately footed urns ring right against the backdrop of my own arts and crafts style home. However, they might be elegant and unexpectedly beautiful in a contemporary setting. The location you have in mind should influence your decision.
The scale of an urn is an important consideration. Very small urns may need pedestals to set them off properly. If the shape and decoration of an urn is a good bit of what you find appealing, then they need be placed where those things can be easily seen. Small urns have another significant disadvantage. From a small size follows a small planting area; you will need to edit your plant choices. Perhaps of more importance-how easily will you be able to water, and water again, when the weather gets hot? Small pots dry out faster than is easy to keep up with.
I like urns of a generous size. I have plenty of room to plant-either lots of one thing, or a collection. An urn planted such that in late summer it is a garden bouquet of good size is a pleasure. Watered properly, they retain moisture evenly, over a longer period of time. A container that can wait for me to get there with the hose- this I appreciate. Any urn I plant becomes part of the working garden. A gorgeous urn with a poor planting is a frustration no gardener needs.
This English wirework urn is of English manufacture. It has a matching pedestal, which provides plenty of height for a good show of trailing plants off the rim. The bowl of the urn has all but disappeared by late summer. In this case, the lush planting is of more important visual importance than the urn itself. The plainest most homely galvanized bucket can be glorious- given an inspired planting. The only advantage of a decorative urn is a beautiful appearance during those times when they are not planted. In some situations, a container which is also a sculpture is a good idea.
These French art deco style urns have such style and presence one might be inclined not to plant them. The Waterloo Urn I discussed in yesterday’s post is placed out in the open landscape. Unplanted, it could be placed anywhere calling for a sculpture-no need to have water conveniently nearby.
This lead urn is watered via a tube connected to the irrigation system in this yard. In much the same way as greenhouses tube their hanging baskets, or geraniums, these tubes buy a gardener a little time. They are not really a substitue for hand watering, as the coverage can be uneven, too long, or too short. If the tube runs on a nearby irrigation zone, that pot is at the water mercy of whatever else is being primarily watered. I am more than willing to look after my plantings; some automatic irrigation helps me to hedge this pledge. Those days that I come home really late will not need be a crisis. The level of your ability to maintain pot plantings is an important part of the selection process.
These concrete pots are English made reproductions, but they have that aged look. The surface is such that I would plant the tall, and vase shaped-nothing trailing. Ala some voluminously opulent Flemish flower painting. There is no choosing these pots if the decorative story being told does not greatly appeal-why cover up what so appealed to you in the first place? In this case, the urns and there plantings need to strike a balance, so they look great in relationship to one another.
These cast iron urns with zinc liners are French from the Victorian period. That French green color is a dead giveaway. Their unusual and striking design would make them sensational in the right place. My year 1 choice would be to plant these with big blue agaves, and call it a day. After one season, something even more fabulous may come to mind. I will admit I did buy my house 15 years ago for the four urns outdoors that were original to the house-I had to have them.
Amazingly enough, it was my fifth grade science teacher that taught me the color basics. I remember that she covered individual panes of some of the classroom windows with sheets of red, yellow and blue acetate. Her explanation of the term “primary colors” was simple-these three colors come standard issue in nature-they cannot be made from any other colors. She had a stack of giant acetate rectangles every color imaginable, and we did spend a lot of time trying to overlay sheets in some form that would produce yellow. We never made any yellow, but we did make lots of other colors-the secondary colors. Secondary, meaning the result of the mix of any two primary colors. Then we made tertiary colors-any mix of three colors. 
This may have been science, but it was pure fun. Once we had green from mixing blue and yellow, and orange from yellow and red, and purple from blue and red, we pasted these combos on the windows. Over a period of days, every window in the room had a distinctly different color. In the center, the single sheets of the primary colors. At the edges, stacks of acetate sheets that looked like the color of mud. I remember how enchanted I was with all that color; to this day a set of pastels, markers, yarn samples,colored pencils, paints and the like interest me. I did not so much grasp the relationship of color to light, but I could see it. The quality of light greatly influences the appearance of color-anyone who has loved a paint chip at the store, and put it on a wall at home to disastrous effect understands this. 
Color in the landscape functions the same way. The primary colors have an electricity that comes with the territory, but where and how color gets placed determines how it looks. Yellow reads brilliantly at a distance; use it in places far away from your eye, or to back up other darker or more subtle colors that would otherwise fade from view. The transparency of yellow makes it a perfect choice for areas in the landscape that are back lit-it will look like the lights are on. The edges of these dahlias petals have gone green; they are too thick to transmit light well. The dark behind the dahlia turns the yellow dirty yellow-green. 
This composition is first and foremost about yellow. It draws your eye, and keeps your visual attention. It is secondarily about tulips, yews, boxwood, geometry-and so on. Notice how the color far away in this photo are subdued, muddy, and indistinct-but for the green of the emerging leaves. New leaf green has a lot of yellow in it-that yellow reads at a distance.
Princeton gold maple leaves are really yellow with a green cast when they first emerge.
In a sunny spot, the leaves read yellow to the eye at the top, where they get the most light. As your eye looks at this tree from top to bottom, the color changes. The leaves with least exposure to light are the darkest. The change in value-or relative lightness or darkness-from the top of this tree to the bottom is considerable. The trunk of the tree looks black, given all the light behind it. 
Yellow has the ability to light up a shady area. The gerberas at the top glow in front of the yews whose color almost appears black. Densely shady gardens can die visually if some effort is not made to introduce contrast. One landscape project involved a densely wooded area; cutting out the brush and sapling trees in a few selected areas created pools of light. The contrast of light and dark added visual interest, but also made it possible to see the more subtle colors of the plants in the ground. 
Likewise, painting the concrete floor of one room in the shop these grassy-shaped variations of chartreuse and yellow green made it easier to see everything that would be placed in the room. Milo’s coat color is known as “dark brindle”. All the individual colors present in his coat read much more clearly than they would should I have photographed him with a dark background.
