Potted Plants Can Add to Your Diversity

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)

Indian pink (Spigelia marilandica)

Royal catchfly (Silene regia)

Over the years, I have found that I can add greatly to the wildflower diversity in my landscape by growing otherwise-difficult native plants in large pots and placing them in areas of my yard that get the right kind of sunlight. Many of my favorite wildflowers are native to north Florida and I have tried them unsuccessfully before planting them directly into the soil. While I could have simply given up on them, I've not been willing to do so. These wildflowers, blooming in my yard and not several hundreds of miles away, bring me a lot of joy and it allows me to add even more diversity to my landscape than would be possible otherwise.
Some of my native plant friends treat me as a sort of heretic for promoting native plants outside their natural range, but I've learned to tune them out. Right or wrong, diversity is the key to a living landscape and joy is far too-often discounted as a goal. To some, it seems like I am somehow cheating by keeping wildflowers in pots, but the pollinators don't know the difference between these plants and the ones I've directly planted. My bloodroots (Sangineria canadensis) and Indianpinks, (Spigelia marilandica) for example, have been in pots now for nearly 10 years. They emerge and bloom in the spring, set seed, and die back in the fall - just as they would if they were planted directly in the ground. I see no difference. They are ecologically the same.
Large landscape pots can be used very effectively to grow wildflowers that might otherwise perish in your home conditions. By using a good potting mix and augmenting that if need be, you can provide the type of soil your plants require. A pot can be moved to meet a plant's light requirements as well. If the pot is large enough, there is very little additional watering required. I water my pots if it hasn't rained for several days, but the extra water is minimal. After all, I am watering a pot, not a landscape.
When I moved from my former home in Seminole to this one in Holiday, it was simple to put the pots in my car and transport them. That was not the case for many of my landscape plants that were too well-established to dig up and move. Potted native wildflowers can also create very effective pollinator gardens for folks with limited space - they can be placed on condominium and apartment decks just as effectively as they can in my typical-sized yard.
My potted plant wetland also has fared well here. I've written about it previously, but it deserves some mention here. In it, the 2 species of blue button snakeroots (Eryngium aquaticum and E. integrifolia) , a Catesby's lily (Lilium catesbaei)  and some southern maidenhair fern (Adiantum capillus-veneris) have, once again, performed spectacularly for me. In a potted setting, wetlands are easy no matter what your growing conditions are.

My wetland pot - pre-flowering this summer

I believe that one goal in creating a truly living landscape is to create diversity. Diversity comes from our plant choice and that is controlled as much by our creativity as it is by what we've been given as landscape conditions.