Decor idea: plants in unusual containers

Items to repurpose for your plants

Material matters because you will almost certainly leave your plantings outside year-round. Anything made of metal, plastic, zinc, leather or enamel can remain outdoors without worry. Porcelain, glass or earthenware will be more fragile. For wood, it depends on the patina you want and the lifespan you expect for these objects. Chipped or holed items are actually ideal for ensuring drainage for plants, so don’t throw them away!

Items picked up at flea markets or car-boot sales often prove very attractive, even graphic when you repeat them in series, to create patterns or lines, or when you repaint them in tones that match the garden.

One rule applies: avoid a chaotic look! Instead, try grouping small items, adopt a theme centred on a particular object — it will look much more stylish.

Raw materials

A reclaimed wood pallet salvaged and placed vertically against a wall, a bit of DIY if you wish, acts as a space‑saving planter for trailing plants… Left untreated, it weathers over time and really blends into the setting.

Sacks in jute : they can be used to make attractive containers with a good volume of soil in which to plant many plants.

Tin cans : you certainly have a few cans lying around. They look fun once painted in flashy colours or, more classically, in a more neutral or pastel shade to make hanging displays (by attaching them in threes or fives to pretty twine) or very handy flower pots at little cost. Choose trailing plants for a great effect.

Old cauldron with holes that is no longer used, jam basin nobody uses… can still be used to host pots of Agapanthus, a spirea, and many perennials.

Old tyres : they can still be used, stacked and repainted, serving as large planters. Not everyone’s taste, though…

A repainted gas bottle (Photo: S. Sputzer), a pallet in full bloom (bpunktwpunkt blogspot), a few baskets ready to use!

Refined objects

They slip into bucolic gardens in small, subtle touches, and bring plenty of poetry to the garden! You can even make them a guiding thread in garden decoration, telling a little story along the promenade…

Birdcages : the quintessential romantic object, taking up little space when hung from a tree branch, or placed in a patio on a small table or windowsill. Offer them supple, graceful, lightweight plants that are trailing through the mesh. Ivy is particularly effective.

Teapots : they make delightful small pots for all your small-dimension plants: hyacinths, perennials, but also cacti. Grouped in threes, they form a charming plant trio. In glass they even become pretty terrariums whose lid you can remove from time to time.

Toiletry sets in faience: ultra-vintage indoors, invite them into the garden too where they stand out in a mini rockery, for example.

Old baskets or wicker objects: perfect in a natural garden, they bring lots of charm with perennials that will flourish year after year, or spring bulbs that you replace with a few sowing of wild annuals for the summer.

Small cases or suitcases, once opened, serve as a setting for the first spring bulbs.

A wooden ladder  will serve more as support for a few small pots to display spring bulbs… Lovely !

Zinc

Star material in recycling where you’ll find plenty of items for our plants: milk churns, lengths of gutter, watering cans, wash tubs, old zinc kettles, baths, etc. Undrilled, perfect for plants that favour moist soil or for submerged plants. Drilled, use as a standard pot, already with drainage hole.

Zinc is magical and so stylish! (Photo: G. David)

Miscellaneous items

Old boots : An arrangement of boots no longer in use will form a graphic display for small wild grasses. Old leather boots are fun as pots for succulents or for groundcover sedum spilling over…

Chairs : An old country chair with a hole in its layer, or whose seat weaving needs redoing, can be used to place in its centre a pot of annual country flowers: store your chair under cover in winter to keep it as long as possible; otherwise it may become too badly damaged.

An enamel basin is a clever and pretty container for primroses and muscaris

Old cake moulds grouped together are perfect for an arrangement of collection plants

Vintage metal box: it can be a showcase for miniature plants, serve as a mini rockery…

Wood drawer: it’s a lovely idea to place a few plants of the same theme, such as herbs for example on a small table. If you stack three drawers, the effect is even more charming!

Old barrels: cut in half, they are superb as a mini pond for aquatic plants once lined with pond liner, or as a large tub to accommodate a plant such as a lemon tree, a palm or a small original bush

XXL items

Old zinc bathtub: its size and depth are ideal for pond or marginal plants, or for creating large planters

Old bicycle: at the entrance to a house, it looks charming with a potted display tucked into the basket on the handlebars. 

A piano: an old wooden piano beyond repair can serve both as a fountain and as a planter… for the musician-gardener ! 

What type of plants?

This type of vintage object particularly showcases aromatic herbs, small cacti, succulents, spring bulbs, and plants for moist soil in large containers. The smaller the container, the more you should choose compact plants.

• houseleeks, saxifrages and sedums creeping require very little soil, so they are ideal for small shallow pots (zinc kettle, old boots, enamel or earthenware basins, aluminium colanders, drawers…). Create beautiful mini rockeries in all these little objects.
• Many aromatic herbs (notably thymes and savoury) will find a place in slightly larger containers, which should also be drained and have a hole in the bottom (watering can, baskets)
• Annuals and biennials (pansies, violas…), perennials and spring bulbs (anemones, hyacinths, tulips, daffodils, ipheions, muscaris…) will be happy in medium-sized objects: baskets, chairs, basins…
• Trailing plants, such as ivy, certain sedums, helxine, muehlenbeckia
• Think of Osteospermums, Japanese grasses, heathers — plants that tolerate little soil;
• In general, rough materials suit unusual plants or those with large foliage, but it is all a matter of taste.
• Taller objects (jugs, metal boxes, milk cans, wash tubs, barrels…) are perfect for hosting grasses mixed with a few perennials (heucheras, saxifrages…).
• Zinc wash tubs and other large basins make perfect containers for Alocasias, horsetails, Arums, even Gunneras. If not drilled, they can accommodate all sorts of plants for wet soil.