Porch Railing Planter Boxes

It's time to plant the annuals! I love planting flowers, its like therapy. :)
I've been doing a little better the last couple of years, not going totally crazy at the greenhouse...but it is hard!  I limited myself to buying just enough to fill 2 hanging baskets and 4 pots on the deck and the 3 railing planters on the front porch.  In this year's planters I have Million Bells petunias (in orange, red, and pink), sweet potato vine, New guinea impatiens, and vinca.

My previous blog post and various pictures of the railing planters have been getting lots of traffic from pinterest lately, so I thought I would do a follow-up on what I did this year to improve them a bit.
I wanted the planters to have the same look as my moss-lined hanging baskets .  I found expandable ones at Home Depot. (I don't think they carry them anymore, though).

They are meant to hold one of those plastic window boxes, but I ran some wire around them so that I could line them with spahgnum moss and plant directly in that.  It worked out pretty well, but I noticed that by mid to late summer, when the plants were full grown, the boxes just weren't deep enough and didn't hold enough dirt to keep the flowers happy.

So this year I lined them with chicken wire that extended about 2 inches above the top. Much Better! There should be plenty of room for healthy and happy roots well into fall.

And as long as we're out here, here's a few more front yard photos.  :)
Ooohh, and you can see in the picture above that we also finally got our bubbler fountain (from the other house) installed at the new place.

And this is a photo of the house when we purchased it 2 and a half years ago...

And this is it now...

We still have quite a bit of work to do on the front landscaping, but that will all come in time.
Have you gotten any annuals planted yet? Happy gardening, everyone.