An oak barrel - or even a faux oak barrel - Is perfect for blueberries. You can put 3 plants in one standard sized barrel. I see no reason to sink it into the ground. The change of level will add interest. You can plant herbs around the barrel, perhaps putting some stepping stones around the barrel so you can pick the berries without stepping on the other plants. The barrel should not be too close to the sidewalk for reasons mentioned above. At some point, you may have to net the berries, or birds may eat them before you get to them. The fence is quite low, so if you plan to espalier, you will have to add a trellis or something for support. Basil is an annual. Tarragon dies out in the winter, but regrows. parsley can last a few years, as can chives. Rosemary is a perennial shrub and can get large if not pruned regularly. Sage is drought tolerant and basil likes more water, so don't plant them next to each other. Good luck with you edible landscape. One of my neighbors has a pomegranate tree and artichokes in the strip next to the driveway. The tomatoes are farther back where they can't be seen from the street. Here is a link that might be useful: What's Growin' On?

Nonbryan, There is nothing a gardenia hates more than being stuck in a pot. You live in a warm zone, so you must put it back in the garden. Before you do, find a nice spot for it around a tree, so it will get some afternoon shade, for the really hot months. If the shade is around 2pm til dusk, it would be perfect. Then, add some soil conditioner and some composted manure (or a little peat moss if you can't find soil conditioner) to the native soil and mix in it real good. Take the plant, rinse the roots off and plant it in the hole with your ammended soil. If you have red clay soil, plant the gardenia up on a little mound of your ammended soil so the plant sits higher up for good drainage. Don't feed it for one month. You just stressed it out. Mulch, mulch, mulch it good, but don't let the mulch touch the stem of the plant itself. Water it good after transplanting. Then don't water it again for a week. You'll kill it by overwatering it very easily. DOn't spray the water directly on the plant ever. Water in morning only once a week, spraying water on the bottom of the plant. In one month, which will be beginning of May, fertilize with Miracle Grow azela and Rhodo fertilizer. Half strength. A little goes a long way. It will get yellow leaves after you transplant it, that is normal. DOn't panic, it reacts to stress that way. Stop fertilizing in September, so that will be it's last meal. If you need more mulch by then, add some more for the winter. Placing a water feature like a little fountain nearby the gardenia will help provide humidity, unless it is humid where you live. Gardenias aren't hard to grow in the ground at all. Good luck to you, and I hope your wife is happy this summer with it. (by the way, you can get what you need for the soil and food at HD)

Lou, didn't mean to bother you. I should have thought through the many equally valuable cultural differences in this beautiful land of ours and prefaced my question with "To those of you with a front porch on your house that's big enough to hold a potted plant, meaning no disrespect to those of you without a front porch or with a front porch that is not big enough to hold more than the cat's dish". In my hurried self-centeredness I didn't even consider the feelings of the good people who live in the puckerbush who have no sidewalks or curbs nor noticeable front porches. No harm was meant by this honest mistake. I do hope, however, that my error has served a higher purpose, which is to put you closer in touch with your hermit roots and the values of puckerbush life. Peace. Stuartwanda, annuals would be at the bottom of my list, but since the list is so short, they may be my second choice. Sherry Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

Just to clarify, I only placed them in my larger outdoor pots while I was outside. Somehow, they found their own way into my smaller- & medium-sized pots all on their own. Which happened while my plants were outdoors. I didn't even know that they were there until I went to soak my pots. And even then, there were only a few of them. All of which were a fraction of the size of the outdoor earthworms. No bigger than the ones in iamhopscotch's photos. They have been there for at least two years now and not once have they ever negatively affected the health of any of my plants. So I pretty much leave them alone. I don't use them to aerate my already fast-draining soil. And even if they "break down" the soil, "Earthworms leave behind excrement or castings containing from 5 to 11 times the amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium they have ingested." All of which the plants can use.I repot my plants long before the soil gets depleted, and the old soil gets tossed out into the remote corners of my yard, along which whatever's inhabiting it. Even if my new, fresh potting soil were to somehow gain newer earthworms, I wouldn't go out of my way to try and rid them from my pots. People want to try and grow their plants in sterile environments, dousing their plants with fungicides and insecticides, and nature doesn't work like that. I'm not advocating putting earthworms in your indoor pots. I was simply stating that I found them in my indoor plants and never once have I encountered any problems from them being there. Sure, I placed them in my large, outdoor pots. But that was because those pots stay outdoors year-round. The smaller earthworms found their own way into my smaller pots, while those pots were outdoors. People claim that they can't survive living in containers, but the small ones in mine seem to do just fine. Even if they were to die, their remains end up breaking down into enriched nutrients that the plants can use.