Back at the beginning of the summer I wrote about planting some flower boxes outside my kitchen window.  They were full of pink geraniums, yellow snapdragons, and a mass of trailing petunias.  I never followed up with a “here’s how they turned out” post because, well, they never quite lived up to my hopes.  This was mostly due the effects of weeklong neglect while I was gone for business travel during the hottest, driest summer in Britain in the last 50 years.

With the days now autumnally short and the weather shifting to chilly English wetness, I decided it was time to retire the bright (and now quite tired) summer plants and bring in some new friends for the autumn/winter season.

I went to the Camden Garden Centre and was delighted by the fact that autumn flower boxes are enough of “a thing” here that they were all set with an array of beautiful container plants.  It was an embarrassment of choices, really.  I wanted to try them all!  But instead I focused on a simple color palette of white, purple, and pink, and then set about finding some good textures to make it interesting.

Naturally I brought my tape measure and monopolized one side of the pavement to lay out my plan:

The heather and cyclamen were my anchoring concepts.  I wanted the heather to remind me of my sister, and the cyclamen to remind me of the Christmas I spent with my parents in Las Vegas — we visited the Bellagio, where the fields of cyclamen in their holiday floral display were simply dazzling.  I added purple coral bells and trailing ivy (both of which also remind me of Lady who grew them both when I was a kid), and then a couple of hebes, which remind me of plant shopping with Justin in Seattle.

I managed to get them all home without too much incident.  Flower shopping without a car is no easy feat, but between giant grocery bags and Uber, I managed not to kill or break any plants.

I laid them out on my counter and began placing them into the window boxes.  First one side . . .

. . . then the other . . .

. . . until both could be placed back out on the ledge where they’ll live and hopefully thrive.

I’m really pleased with how they turned out.  The colors and textures feel well-suited to the season.  Here’s hoping they’re as happy with their new home as I am with them.