I love this ideal, just not for wood furniture.  Something tells me adding moss to wood won't help with durability, so I would suggest trying this on metal or plastic furniture.  This would be a great way to spruce up any old outdoor furniture!

Add Lots of Green Plants In Containers
One easy way to add green plants are with green plants in large containers. Since we don't have a lot of garden space I plan to plant green veggies. 

Green Veggies that You Can Grow in Containers
This year I plan to collect a lot of large planters at estate sales this spring and add green edibles like lettuce, kale, and spinach.  I also plan to plant grapes as well as green herbs in containers. 

Check out how to regrow lettuce from stumps from Peculiaritie

I plan to try to grow some lettuce from stumps leftover from our produce.  We haven't done this yet.  As anyone tried this?  I plan to try this with a lot of other produce this year so of course there will be posts coming on this.

Add green to your garden and grow food with this grape vine trained tree in a pot.  Check out other cool stuff like this in the book "Grow up! by Susan Morrison and Rebecca Sweet.

I also plan to try to grow a grape tree in a container.  We've never grown grapes ever and I've been wanting to but I can't add any pre-annuals to our yard until we get geothermal in a few years (we're waiting until the energy tax breaks expire).   This will be perfect for us.  I can't wait to try this.   Has anyone ever done this? 

If you want to grow green plants that aren't edible here are my favourite picks.

Low Maintenance Green Plants that You Can Grow in Containers
 

Box woods in containers via A Well Traveled Women

Trimmed box woods provide great structure and year round green to any space.  Why not put them in containers so you can move them around where you please.  Shrubs are a great option for patios or small spaces and shrubs are pretty low maintenance. They're great to define an entrance or create privacy too.
 

Before planting losen up any root bound roots.  Find more tips at Fiskars

So what type of boxwood will work in a container?  In order to find some suitable boxwoods for containers and zone 4 (Minneapolis is zone 4) I visted Saunders Brothers Nursery's website and checked the boxes for zone 4, green foliage, and containers and what came up was Chicagoland Green Boxwood, Green Mound Boxwood, Green Mountain Boxwood, Green Velvet Boxwood.  If the pot and plant will be outdoors all year round, choose a heavy pot that can withstand freezes (very important in MN) and a plant hardy enough to weather winter conditions in your climate.  According to some one on pinterest, "‘Green Mountain’ boxwood (Buxus ‘Green Mountain’, Zones 4–9) is a slow-growing shrub that, unlike many other boxwoods, retains a dark green color throughout the winter. I particularly like this cultivar because it grows into a graceful pyramid rather than turning into a meatballshaped shrub. It’s tough, but living in a container will keep it smaller than its normal 5-foot height and 3-foot width. Place ‘Green Mountain’ away from strong winds in a semishaded location if possible."


Add Pops Of Colour  

Obviously an easy way to add colour is to add bright coloured flowers, but since we are limited in space (and especially space that gets sun) we try to use that space to grow veggies, so the question is what veggies can I grow that are pretty and colourful and what flowers can I grow in small places or shade.  Here are my Top picks:

Colourful Heirloom Veggies

Check out more great colourful veggie ideals at Better Homes and Garden

Heirloom Tomatoes come in lots of different colours  Cherokee Purple, yellow 'Lemon Boy', pink 'Brandywine', 'Green Zebra', orange 'Tangella', and creamy 'Snow White' are just a few ideals.  We've grown heirloom tomatoes before but the only colours (besides red) we have tried is Cherokhoee Purple.  They grew to be huge tomatoes, great for making sauce.  They did crack a lot more than my other tomatoes at the time that were much snaller.  What's your favourite heirloom tomato?

Some other heirloom vegetables we've tried are purple podded pole beans (pictured below), and purple basil.  We also grew purple broccoli (pictured below), but I don't think that's heirloom.  I like purple veggies because it's unexpected (except for eggplant) and the colour pops so beautifully against green.  I also think if you don't have many opportunities to add colour it's best to pick just one or two colours to plant since it will make a bigger impact.

Our heritage purple podded pole beans with pretty purple blooms from Seed Savers Exchange 2012

Our Purple broccoli 2012

Check out this colourful garden photograhed by Laura Berman Green Fuse Photography

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