Perfectly Contained : An Exclusive Benefit Plant Sale Spawns Some Inventive Potted Plants

IT’S AN INTRIGUING IDEA for an annual fund-raiser: The 25 members of the Diggers Garden Club in Pasadena each put together “10 perfect pots.” The 12 best are selected by a jury and auctioned off, and the rest are sold at a by-invitation-only sale for members and friends. But what is more intriguing about this exclusive event is that it generates more than merely money; the participants come up with a bounty of ideas for growing unusual plants in inventive containers.

At the most recent sale in March, one pot held a “Pick Your Own Salad Bar,” according to its label. The exotic leafy greens included red oak leaf lettuce, radicchio , Lolla Rossa (an Italian loose-leaf lettuce) and Tango (a bronze-leafed Batavian, or crisp-head, lettuce). In a low wide bowl grew a new lavender phlox named ‘Mrs. Crockett’ (which blooms for months). In another grew kangaroo paw. Some pots hold small topiaries, such as creeping thyme growing in a lollipop shape. Miniature climbing roses were trained up tiny arbors.

Baskets are favorite containers. Most are lined with green moss or plastic and then filled with soil. One member stacked up graduated sizes of terra-cotta saucers and then planted succulents on each concentric ledge. Another, on a trip overseas, shipped back several of the heavy stone troughs considered the classiest of containers in England and then planted one of them with rare rock-garden plants purchased in the Pacific Northwest.

The money raised by the Diggers Garden Club goes to the public gardens (such as the Old Mill garden in San Marino) that the organization helps plant and maintain.