Bougainvillea has a lush, tropical look that can liven up any landscape. But if you don’t want to plant one in the ground, it also makes a good container plant. That means you can enjoy this blooming beauty even in cooler climates. And it makes a great addition to your patio or balcony with the right care and maintenance.
Bougainvillea grows well in containers because it likes it when its roots get a little restricted. Just be sure the pot has holes for draining, and you use potting soil that doesn’t hold too much moisture. Give your Bougainvillea something to climb on or hang from as it grows for the best results.
Growing larger plants in containers can be a challenge, but if you’re willing to put in the time and effort, it’s definitely worth it. In this article, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about growing Bougainvillea in a pot, including the pros and cons. We’ll also explain everything from soil to water and pruning to set you up for success right from the start.
Can You Grow Bougainvillea in a Pot?
Not every plant grows well in a pot, especially those known for growing to a large size like Bougainvillea. So can you even grow this big blooming vine in a container?
Bougainvillea can do quite well in a pot or container. Unlike other vines, Bougainvillea prefers conditions where its roots are slightly constricted. So you don’t have to worry too much about having a pot large enough to accommodate the vine’s size.
Of course, there are many different types of Bougainvillea, and some are better suited for container growing than others. So if you’re wondering whether it’s better to grow your Bougie in a pot or in the ground, the answer is “it depends.”
If you’re growing a large variety that will climb to over 30 feet tall, you may be better off planting it in the ground versus repotting it into a larger container later on. On the other hand, smaller varieties will do just as good (if not better) in the tight, contained environment of a flower pot.
Which Bougainvilleas Are Best for Containers?
Many compact and dwarf Bougainvillea varieties are perfect for growing in pots and containers. These petite vines will fill the space in the pot and climb with support without becoming too massive. They also look great in hanging baskets or over the edge of a balcony.
These are some of my favorites:
- Blueberry Ice: Grows up to three feet tall and five to six feet wide with lavender-blue flowers and green and white foliage.
- Golden Jackpot: Bright purple flowers, green foliage with white borders. Great for hanging baskets, one of the few Bougies that will tolerate some light shade.
- Miss Alice: This is a semi-dwarf plant with stunning white blooms and a shrubby appearance. Miss Alice has fewer thorns than some others, making it a good choice for a hanging basket, patio, or balcony.
- Bambino Baby Sophia: Grows to be about five feet tall, lovely reddish-orange bracts. This dwarf variety will twine and climb, so it’s perfect for next to a trellis or anything else it can grow up on.
- Raspberry Ice: This Bougie has classic pink-purple blooms and soft green foliage with white accents. The growth habit is low and mounded, so it’s good for growing in containers or hanging baskets.
- Vera Deep Purple: The breathtaking deep purple or magenta blooms are what make this plant a go-to. It has a compact, upright growing habit and is nearly thornless. It’s perfect for container growing.
- Helen Johnson: With its bright magenta-purple to hot pink blooms, this true dwarf Bougainvillea is perfect for container growing. It only gets about three feet tall.
Should You Grow Bougainvillea in a Pot or Not?
Whether you have a new Bougainvillea or are thinking of propagating one of your existing plants, you may be wondering whether you should plant it in the ground or in a container. There are advantages and disadvantages to either choice, so it’s a good idea to consider all of them before making your final decision.
Pros
Control the Size: Bougainvillea can quickly grow into a bushy, tangled mess without the right care and maintenance. If you don’t want to train it to climb a fence or pergola, growing it in a container is an easy way to keep the plant manageable.
Bring it Inside: If you live in an area where winter temperatures drop below what this tropical plant prefers, you can easily bring your container plant inside. If your Bougie is planted in the ground, protecting it from the cold will be more challenging.
Relocate the Pot: If you want to put your Bougainvillea in a different location or if you realize the spot you picked doesn’t get enough sun, moving a container plant is easy. That’s not something you can do with an in-ground Bougie.
Easy to Maintain: Most of the smaller dwarf varieties grow more slowly and have fewer thorns. That makes them easier to maintain and prune. Not to mention having the plant contained in a pot scales down the job quite a bit.
Great for Deck or Balcony: If you want to put your Bougainvillea on your deck, patio, or balcony, a hanging pot or container is the way to go. You can use an upright pot with a small trellis or a hanging basket with tendrils cascading down.
Cons
Needs More Care: Any plant in a pot or container will likely need more care and attention. The soil may be less rich and with fewer nutrients. So you may have to do some light fertilizing and more frequent watering for your potted Bougainvillea.
May Need to Climb: Depending on the variety, you may still need to provide support for your Bougainvillea, even if it’s in a container. Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time pruning and shaping the plant.
Watering Issues: Bougainvilleas are picky about getting wet feet. Be sure you choose a container with drain holes and use potting soil that won’t hold too much moisture. Once your Bougie is planted, you may need to water it more frequently than if it were in the ground. But you’ll also need to be more careful about overwatering.
Where to Place Your Bougainvillea Pot
When you’re ready to start your container growing project, you’ll need to find the perfect place for your pot. Luckily, Bougainvilleas aren’t too picky as long as they get plenty of sunshine. So before you choose the location, check how much sunlight the area gets all throughout the day.
Bougainvilleas need at least six hours of full sun every day. Being in the shade for even half the day can cause you to miss out on those bright, beautiful blooms. No one wants that!
Placing your Bougainvillea on a deck or patio is the perfect place to add a pop of color. It also brings some of your garden landscape into your living area. Again, just be sure that your house, furniture, trees, and other structures don’t block the sun from your Bougie.
If you put your Bougainvillea pot next to a deck or patio railing, you could let the vine climb up and over, creating a wall of bright flowers.
Or, if you want to grow your Bougainvillea on a balcony, place the pot next to the railing and train the vines to grow upward. You can read more about training your Bougie to climb.
Use soft ties (if needed) to help it reach the top of the railing. Then, you can let it naturally drape over the side. Over time, your Bougainvillea will continue to grow and fill in space while cascading over the edge of the balcony. What a gorgeous sight!
Another option is to use hanging baskets. Your Bougainvillea will naturally grow up and over the sides of the pot, leaving you with dangling lush foliage and blooms.
How Big Can Bougainvillea Grow in a Pot?
Bougainvillea can grow quite large in a pot. However, the exact size ultimately depends on which type you planted. Some Bougainvilleas are dwarf or semi-dwarf plants that won’t grow larger than a few feet tall. However, they’ll continue to grow thicker and become dense over time.
The largest Bougainvillea varieties can grow to 30 feet tall, so pay attention to what you’re buying when choosing one for a container. You’ll want to go with something labeled “dwarf,” “semi-dwarf,” or “compact.” These types typically don’t grow taller than six feet.
If you go with a large variety, it will eventually outgrow its container and need to be repotted. You can certainly do that, but it will become more difficult to manage with size. So if you want a large Bougie, we recommend planting it in the ground instead.
The Best Pot for Bougainvillea
The best pot for your Bougainvillea is one with drainage holes and made of lightweight material that you can move if needed. If the pot doesn’t have drainage holes, you can create them by drilling into the bottom of the pot. It must have at least one hole for water to escape. We typically go with plastic or resin pots because they’re easy to find, not too expensive, and lightweight. However, you can use any type of pot you prefer.
So how big of a pot does your Bougainvillea need? Bougainvilleas need enough room for the root system to grow, but they also do best in a slightly restricted environment. So you don’t want to get a huge planter, but you also don’t want to use a pot that’s too small for it to thrive.
Go with a pot that’s 12-16 inches wide and about 18 to 24 inches tall. This should give your Bougie enough room to grow without going overboard. If your pot is too tall and you don’t need to use all the space in the bottom, you can fill it with plastic water or (clean) soda bottles. This is an easy and inexpensive filler that’s lightweight and also encourages even draining through the bottom.
What Soil is Best for Container Bougainvillea?
When it comes to choosing the right soil, Bougainvilleas need something rich and well-draining. Choose potting soil that’s not loaded with peat moss. Peat moss retains moisture and won’t be good for your Bougainvillea roots.
Mix your potting soil with some perlite to promote drainage. You can also use a potting mix designed for low-moisture plants, like cactus and succulent mix. Put a layer of that toward the bottom of the pot with the remaining potting soil on top for ideal conditions.
Caring for Bougainvillea in a Pot
Bougainvilleas are easy to grow in the right conditions. Still, any plant in a container will need a little more care than one planted in the ground. Because you create and control the environment, it’s important to keep a close eye on the conditions to maintain your Bougainvillea’s health over time.
Water
Before you transplant your Bougainvillea to its new home, give it a good drink the night before. Once you get it planted in the container, give it another good soaking. This will help reduce the stress and help the root system settle into its new environment.
Over the next couple of weeks, keep a close eye on your Bougie and check the moisture level in the pot. You’ll want to keep it somewhat moist until it becomes established, watering it once or twice per week.
Once your Bougainvillea is established in its container, you may need to water it about once per week. Adjust your watering schedule depending on whether you get rain showers. Just remember your container Bougainvillea will need more watering than one planted in the ground.
When winter rolls around, cut back on watering as the plant starts to go dormant. You don’t want to let it go completely bone dry for long periods, but you do want to let it dry out some between watering.
Fertilizer
An in-ground Bougainvillea doesn’t need much fertilizing, but one in a container may need some extra nutrients. Use a balanced, all-purpose fertilizer for your Bougainvillea (such as a 5-5-5). The best time to apply fertilizer is in early spring and again in mid-summer.
For your container Bougainvillea, you may need to fertilize a little more often, depending on how well your plant is growing. Starting in early spring, apply a diluted version (half strength) of water-soluble fertilizer once per month. Continue until mid-July, then stop until the following spring.
Take a minute to read more about how and when to fertilize your Bougainvillea (in a pot or in the ground.
Pruning
Pruning your container Bougainvillea is easy as long as you keep up with it. Trim it back to keep it at your desired size and shape. You can deadhead spent blooms anytime. In early spring, after the last frost, you can do a hard prune to cut back all dead and damaged growth. This will also encourage new growth and help encourage more blooms.
To learn more about pruning your Bougainvillea properly, check out this article which discusses the topic in detail.
Training
One of the benefits of growing your Bougainvillea in a container is that it requires less training. You can often just let it grow and prune it back as needed. Still, a little training is key if you want to get the best-looking plant with bountiful blooms.
It’s best to put a small trellis or stakes in or next to the container when you plant your Bougainvillea. Adding a trellis or stakes to the pot later on could potentially damage the roots.
As your Bougainvillea grows, use soft ties to encourage it to grow up and around the trellis or posts. Then, maintain the appearance and shape with pruning as needed. As long as you went with a small Bougainvillea variety, it should be easy to maintain year-round.
Another option is to train your Bougainvillea to grow into a tree shape, also known as a standard. This is a great choice for a container because it will keep the plant small and manageable over time. To learn more about how to train your Bougainvillea as a tree, check out this article which explains the process in detail.
Repotting or Transplanting
If you select the right-sized pot to begin with, you shouldn’t need to transplant or repot your Bougainvillea later on. A Bougainvillea can stay in a small, one-gallon pot for many years, so you don’t want to transplant yours unless it’s necessary. If you notice that your pot is filled with roots and you don’t see much soil, or if the roots start to grow out of the pot, it means your Bougainvillea has outgrown its home.
The best time to repot or transplant a Bougainvillea is in the late winter or early spring before the growing season begins. Use a pot that’s only slightly larger than the existing pot to reduce stress on the plant. Follow the same steps you did when you first planted your new Bougainvillea, but be sure your plant gets enough water after potting it in its new home.
Will Bougainvillea Grow and Bloom Indoors?
If you live in an area where the temperatures are too cold for an outdoor Bougainvillea, you may want to grow one of these beauties inside your home. Not all plants will thrive indoors, but what about Bougainvillea? A Bougainvillea will grow indoors and produce plenty of lush foliage. However, blooming is another story.
Bougainvillea will grow and bloom indoors if it gets enough sunlight. These blooming beauties need at least six hours of full sun each day to bloom properly. So if you have a bright, sunny room for your Bougie, you may be able to enjoy some blooms.
Another option is to put your Bougainvillea outside during the spring and summer and bring it indoors for winter. That way, you will protect your vine from the cold but still ensure it gets enough warmth and sunshine to bloom for a good part of the year.
Putting It All Together
Growing Bougainvillea in a pot or container is a great option for anyone who doesn’t want to deal with a large, in-ground plant. Or, if you want to add pops of color to a deck, patio, or balcony, a potted Bougie is what you need. A successful container Bougainvillea starts with selecting the right variety or cultivar. Be sure to purchase a dwarf or compact variety for the best results with your potted plant.
Just like any other Bougainvillea, your container plant needs well-draining soil and plenty of sunshine. Of course, it will take a little more effort on your part to keep the plant watered and fed, but it will be well worth it when you get to enjoy the bright and colorful blooms year after year.