A hanging basket is a suspended container used for growing decorative

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclu ...

s. Typically they are hung from buildings, where garden space is at a premium, and from

street furniture Street furniture is a collective term for objects and pieces of equipment installed along streets and roads for various purposes. It includes benches, traffic barriers, bollards, post boxes, phone boxes, streetlamps, traffic lights, traf ...

for environmental enhancement. They may also be suspended from free standing frames sometimes called ''hanging basket trees''. One type of hanging basket is the inverted planter where plants are grown in an upside down pot and are watered from the top.

Structure

Hanging baskets are normally made from

wire Overhead power cabling. The conductor consists of seven strands of steel (centre, high tensile strength), surrounded by four outer layers of aluminium (high conductivity). Sample diameter 40 mm A wire is a flexible strand of metal. Wire is c ...

with an impervious, usually plastic, lining to retain the contents. They are filled with

peat Peat (), also known as turf (), is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter. It is unique to natural areas called peatlands, bogs, mires, moors, or muskegs. The peatland ecosystem covers and is the most efficient ...

-free compost usually with a water-retaining gel and controlled release fertiliser granules."Plant up a hanging basket"
BBC.co.uk, retrieved 24 February 2008 Typically they are planted with bedding plants and may include geraniums,

fuchsia ''Fuchsia'' () is a genus of flowering plants that consists mostly of shrubs or small trees. The first to be scientifically described, ''Fuchsia triphylla'', was discovered on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) ...

, and trailing plants around the edges such as

lobelia ''Lobelia'' () is a genus of flowering plants comprising 415 species, with a subcosmopolitan distribution primarily in tropical to warm temperate regions of the world, a few species extending into cooler temperate regions.Huxley, A., ed. (1992 ...

Criticism

Safety concerns have been raised over hanging baskets. In February 2004, Suffolk County Council ruled there was a risk that baskets, part of the annual summer floral displays in Bury St Edmunds, could fall from lampposts and injure the public. After an outcry this decision was reversed the following month. Because of hosepipe bans due to

drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

local authorities Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-loca ...

South East England South East England is one of the nine official regions of England at the first level of ITL for statistical purposes. It consists of the counties of Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Berkshi ...

reduced the number of hanging baskets in public displays in spring 2006."Drought threatens death of the hanging basket"

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

, David Derbyshire and Rebekah Curtis, 25 March 2006

References

External links

{{Lawn and garden ornaments Garden vases