Choosing hanging baskets for your pub garden
What makes a pub frontage stop passers-by — and how to plan baskets that look full from opening until the last of the autumn trade.
A pub frontage does more work than any sign you can hang. People decide whether to walk in from twenty paces away, and colour at eye level is what makes that decision for them. Well-planned hanging baskets turn a plain doorway into an invitation.
Start with the sightlines
Walk the approach your customers walk. Stand at the corner, at the car park entrance, at the bus stop opposite. Baskets do their job where they break up brickwork and frame the door, not where they are easiest to reach with a ladder.
For most frontages we work to a rhythm rather than a row: a pair either side of the entrance, then evenly spaced brackets along the elevation, with troughs picking up any low wall or railing.
Plant for a long season, not a photograph
Anyone can make a basket look good in the second week of June. The skill is in a display that still reads well in late September, when trade is still strong and every other basket in town has gone leggy. That means mixed planting with staggered flowering, generous root volume, and a feeding plan rather than a single dose at planting.
If your baskets look tired by August, they were built for the photograph, not the season.
— The Hanging Basket Specialists
Watering is the whole game
Baskets fail for one reason far more often than any other: they dry out. A south-facing basket in July can need water twice a day. If nobody on the rota owns that task, the display will not last. This is why we build watering into the service rather than leaving it as an afterthought — either through a managed maintenance visit or a simple drip system fed from an existing tap.
Practical points landlords ask about
Brackets should be fixed into sound masonry, not mortar joints, and sited clear of walkways and signage. Drip trays keep water off customers seated below. And if your building is listed or in a conservation area, fixings and bracket styles need thinking about before anything is drilled — we survey for this as standard.
If you would like a frontage plan for the coming season, send us a photo of the building and we will come back with a scheme and a price.