The Windowbox: What’s In It For Me?

Well, as reader and commenter Ruth Anne pointed out: geraniums. Of course, to impress your friends you draw back upon yourself and say: “Geraniums? Certainly not! Pelargoniums!” Of course we’re down home people here at Sippican Cottage and just refer to everything as: “Dah flowahs.”

The windowbox we’re going to make is well suited to geraniums. There you see it just planted with little nursery geraniums and a few vinca vines to eventually droop down. The spot gets good sun in the afternoon so the blooms come. The plants get quite tall for how little soil there is for them to grow in. See yesterday’s photo.

We filled another box of the same design with begonias, which show flowers even though the window faces northwest, ie: never gets any sun.

So what’s a window box for, exactly? Well, it’s got a few uses. In urban settings, it might be all the outdoor plants you’re going to get. In suburbia, the plantings around the house are generally there to blunt the join between the ground and your house. But you can’t see them much from inside the house. Getting them up at sill level brings the outdoors inside a bit, without transferring the buckets of mud indoors.

The purpose of most plants in home landscaping is to achieve a picturesque effect. I’m not sure very many people understand that. There is a melding of cognitive dissonance with a sort of Home Depot delirium tremens in evidence in most landscaping. The houses look like they are at war with the yard; the plants look disconnected from one another and the house; everything is laid out like a farm plot, which is is by its nature unnatural looking; and neatness to the point of plasticity is prized over the picturesque. Your plantings need to be a well organized mess to achieve a picturesque effect. That’s subtle, so it’s harder to understand than a profoundly organized sterile looking yard.

Other than vines creeping right up the siding, the windowbox is the easiest way to further banish the dotted line between inside and outside, harsh and soft, and nature and artifact. And deer don’t like to eat out of them. If you want flowers around here, that’s pretty much your first and only consideration.

You can click on the Amazon box in the right hand column and search for books about what kind of plants you might want to put in there. Then decide which window you want to put the windowbox under, and measure it. Windowboxes traditionally are made the width of the sash, but I like to make them the width of the sash and frame.

There. Day 2 of making a windowbox is over, and you haven’t hit your thumb or broken a sweat. See? I told you it would be easy. Tune in tomorrow and see if we’re actually accomplishing anything yet.

You Can Make It If You Try

Let’s make something.

I make things all day, every day. I’ve made so many things of one sort or another that it’s hard for me to go anywhere and not see one. That’s gratifying. Why don’t yo make something? I’ll help.

The winter is grinding here in the Northeast. It will be gloomy here by the shore until Memorial Day, and never really gets warm until July Fourth. I need to think about spring. How about you? There’s no better way to think about spring than to make a window box.

You can make it now, and have it ready for the first warm day when you clean the winter’s mess from the flower beds. You can know the satisfaction of making something with your hands, and then compound your accomplishment with the making of the flowers that will surely love it in there. Let’s do it. Let’s make a box of mud to hang on your house.

We’ll need a plan. I have one, and I’ll give it to you. You’ll need a few tools. I have all those, and I bet you do, too, or can lay your hands on them. You’ll need to have a little spare time to work on it. I don’t have any of that, but don’t worry; my windowboxes are all finished already. So I’m your early bird, and also the first mouse. You can be the second mouse. Remember, it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese. So get ready to build your “Second Mouse Windowbox.”

Day One: Take the rest of the day off. I’ll sign your timecard. Come back tomorrow.