Elegant Window Box Arrangement

Clear white lilies with a frilly skirt of diascia and dramatic striped grasses make a chic window box display for the front of the house. The lily used here is 'Reinesse', and like all Asiatic lilies it's unscented, but you could easily substitute a perfumed-type, such as 'Muscadet', to produce a fragrant combination.

Materials Needed:

• 'Reinesse' lily
• white diascia (twinspur)
• variegated Japanese grass sedge

• deep white window box
• broken clay pot pieces
• multipurpose potting mix

Prepare the Box

If your window box doesn't have drainage holes, make a few with an electric drill. In early spring, add a layer of broken clay pot pieces to the bottom of the box, and cover them with potting mix. Plant bulbs. Plant the delicate diascia at the front of the box and the stripy sedge at each end. Or, for an instant effect in summer, buy the lilies in flower and pot them up with mature diascia and sedge plants.

Caring for the Display

Feed your window box every two weeks with a tomato fertilizer, and keep it well watered from late spring and throughout the summer. The lilies will flower for a few weeks in summer, and can then be planted out in the garden in well-drained soil. The diascia will bloom continuously all summer and can survive the winter outside in mild areas; the sedge is quite hardy too and is effective in winter displays.

Deadheading Diascia

To help prolong the display, regularly remove fading flowers on your diascia. This stops the plants from producing seeds and focuses their energy on making more flowers instead.