Impatiens Tower

One of the gardens on the Montgomery County Master Gardener had a really neat tower of impatiens that everyone fell in love with. The gardener (David) was kind enough to share instructions for it with me. I have the instructions available if anyone would like them, just email me. There is also a picture of David's tower in that post where I talked of the tour of David's garden.

There are some of the supplies above for our very own impatiens tower. It has taken me about one year to finally get around to making one. It is not a complicated thing to make, just time consuming and we needed a special hole drill bit to drill the holes into the thick PVC. That took time to find. Mr. Fix-it actually made the tower for me. He is such a sweetie and helps me so much in the garden. He is really the brains behind mechanical things and without him I'd be lost. There he is drilling the small holes into the inside pipe of the tower. I had the bright of idea of drilling bigger holes so the water would drain into the outer tube faster. He said no no. You actually want smaller holes so the water will slowly seep. Dave's instruction call for 1/8 inch holes. I actually think that size is a bit too big, but we went with it anyhow. We were fortunate in that we had the PVC pipes laying around. A fellow Freecycler had passed them along to me. I think PVC works in the garden really well. It will not rot, rust or decay. A good thing. The smaller pipe with the water holes goes inside of a larger pipe. The larger pipe has 2" holes drilled in it wherever you want the flowers to go. I finally found what I think is a good spot and dug a hole about 2' deep in order to 'plant' the tower. Once the pipes were stabilized I hand filled the gap created by the inner and outer pipes with a good mix of humus and soil. I then planted the impatiens in each hole. Be sure to add Osmocote or some other slow release fertilizer to each hole. You can use other plants besides impatiens. I think begonias, marigolds, petunias, calicabroas, or sedums would look great as well. I have a lot of shade so impatiens make sense to me.

The impatiens are happy in their tower. My only complaint is with watering and the fact I might have drilled the holes closer together so the plants would grow together faster. Theoretically filling the inner pipe with water will water all of the impatiens. Not so. The water drains out faster than I can fill the pipe so only the bottom flowers get water from the inner pipe. I usually just hand spray each impatiens as necessary. It has not been a big deal but if I had to do it all over again I'd make smaller holes all over the inner pipe. I'd also make the planting holes a bit smaller. Maybe about 1.5 inches. Simply because once planted the roots will take over inside of the pipe and spread out, thus holding in the soil. Right now the soil sometimes washes out. Dave's tower works better for him though, so maybe the problem is just me. At any rate, I do really like this impatiens tower. Everyone who has come by is drawn to it. It is simple to make and a fun way to get a lot of plants in a small space....

in the garden....