Garden Ideas

Last month I looked at ways of recycling and decorating garden furniture. Following on with the garden theme this month I have gathered different ideas for brightening up your outdoor areas with painted plant pots and a variety of other containers.

As you start to tidy and organise for what we hope will be better weather, you may find you already have a selection of garden pots, some with plants that have survived, others looking a bit sad! Most pots can be redecorated if you fancy a change of colour, or you may want to create a new area in the garden and decorate on a theme.

01. A different way of displaying a house number or name is to stencil it onto planters that are attractively filled with bright flowers. You can put one number on each of several planters or create a display of a few pots with the name or number on just one.

02. Any number of simple and more complicated ideas can be used to embellish an old plant pot with paint. You can follow a simple colour theme, use stencils to create patterns, use a rustic or shabby chic theme. It is a good idea to seal terracotta pots with clear acrylic sealer once you have painted them. Paint “glow in the dark” paint on pots and set them around the decking or alongside pathways for a lovely glow at night.

03. Chalk paint is very popular and chalkboard paint can be very handy. Use it to paint herb pots and chalk or paint on the name of the herbs for guaranteed choosing the right herb for your cooking.

04. For a child-based theme create plant pot pets or fruit pots. Caterpillars, ladybirds and bees are simple ideas to use and their bright colours are appealing so that children will love planting their own strawberries, cress or flowers in them. Or paint the pots on a strawberry, orange or melon theme.

05. Pebbles, shells, tiles and beads can all be used to make attractive mosaics on pots. Tile grout provides a good adhesive. Or how about using similar length twigs or even pencils to make an unusual wrap-around for a small flowerpot.

You don’t have to keep to conventional plant pots, in researching ideas for the garden there are a multitude of suggested items that can be recycled into becoming plant containers. Here are some of my favourites which will hopefully give you some inspiration.

01. Succulents work well grown in a wire birdcage, also pretty flowers that can spill out through the bars. It is a good way of utilising vertical space as is the alternative idea for a reclaimed garden planter being an old ceiling chandelier suspended from a tree or bracket on a wall.

02. Metal tin cans and buckets make other good recycled containers. When given a coat of paint, either on a colour theme or in a variety of bright shades they are ideal for a display of smaller plants. On a similar theme use either old watering cans or some of the cute little watering cans you can buy now.

03. Don’t throw out your out-grown or old wellies. Putting plants in them give extra character to a garden area or brighten up a fence. A cute way of using old metal toy cars and other vehicles is to use them as plant container.

04. Recycling old tyres makes quite large and bright display areas for plants, for example made into giant teacups or several layers of tyres painted in a range of bright colours gives more height to a display.

05. Larger items that can be very effectively used for plant displays are sets of drawers or if you can find one that needs loving, an old dresser.

06. With the storms that we have suffered over the last few months it may be that trees in your garden or nearby to you came down as a result. An old tree stump or log hollowed out make attractive and natural looking plant containers. The wood from used wooden pallets which can be used for many different purposes including making flower, fruit or vegetable plant troughs.

07. Finally, my absolute favourite idea – do you have an old bicycle you no longer use, or one that the children have grown out of but you don’t want to get rid of? Use it as a frame for baskets and other containers and plant bright flowers so that they spill out covering much of the frame.

I hope this has given you some new ideas to enhance your garden – all we need now is the sun to shine for more than just a day!