Portable planters are ideal for those who live in apartments, rentals, or summer homes and cabins. They allow the lovers of flora to bring the outdoors into their homes and accent the décor or in the case of many rented spaces liven up the whitewashed walls and sharp corners a bit.
Once you decide that you want a planter in your home you can build either a built-in one or a portable container. Portable containers have the added bonus of their portability.
You can take them outdoors, put them on the patio, put them in your living room, or set them along that half wall in your stairwell. Portable planters make great accents to just about any portion of your home and garden.
Portable planters have five requirements that you should look for when buying your planter or working to fulfill when building your planter.
They are; ample volume for the plants and dirt that you intend to put into the container, the container should be really strong because you will be moving it around and it will have to hold the combined weight of growing plants, water, and dirt, good drainage so that the plants don’t develop root rot, the planter needs to have a wide base so that the planter won’t be as likely to tip over and lastly the planter should be resistant to the weather.
After all, you don’t want to go through the bother of picking out a good planter or building one only to find it doesn’t stand up to the elements. A good material for your planters is painted metal or chemically treated wood.
Although you can use just about anything in the creation of your planter, wooden boxes and tubs, clay pots, and even plastic pots.
It is generally desired that the shape of the portable planter accent well with the general shape of the plant in it at maturity.
So a rounder bushy leafed plant would fit nicely with a round pot. Smaller herbs and spices look well in a long rectangular planter.
If you choose to use clay planters look out for the unglazed kind. These planters easily allow water to pass through the porous clay so it’s less likely that your plant will develop root rot.
You can also grow special kinds of peat moss and sphagnum moss on the outside of the pot since it is porous and allows water to pass through.
Pots of different sizes are referred to in different manners. Those over ten inches are referred to as ‘tubs.’
Built-in Planters
One of the first things you need to decide is which type of built-in planter you want to add to your home. You can have an interior built-in and an exterior built-in, or both. The types of interior built-in planters are;
- Picture window planters
- Room dividers-build own short but long frames ‘bin’ type planter
- Other area planters including the bathroom, stairway, and kitchen planters
A built-in planter can be created to fit into any area of the home. Picture window planters are low long boxes that follow the inside curve of your picture or bay windows.
These types tend to give plants a lot of light. Room dividers tend to explain themselves. If you have a large space that you want to break up into smaller areas you can make use of built-in planters.
They work best in that half wall you may all ready have between the kitchen and dining room or can extend from the wall in the living room to create an organic wall dividing the television area from the coffee table space.
Other kinds of planters can be built to adapt to such spaces as the kitchen, especially if you want a little herb garden, the stairway, and the bathroom.
A small built-in planter that’s low and long like the ‘bin’ type planters can be bracketed to the wall near a light source.
For those who are a little more advanced at carpentry, you can create a staircase planter that fits along the first few stairs.
Or you can similarly make use of the wall space in the stairwell by bracketing a few small planters up. Putting a built-in planter on the window sill of the bathroom window can visually freshen up the area and make it more appealing.
Outdoor Planters
These become a part of the exterior portion of the home. They add that little homey touch to the place and act as one more stamp of your personality when filled with plants of your choice.
Two of the most common built-in outdoor planters are Raised planter beds and Window planter boxes.
There are three good reasons for building raised beds along the foundation of a home
1. They act as a screen to hide the foundation.
2. They provide a visual stepping stone between the house and the larger garden.
3. They serve as a backdrop for flowering shrubs.
Raised planter beds are basically raised beds of soil with a strong retaining wall. They can be as tall as a few feet or more. They provide excellent drainage whether you build the bed without a bottom or when raising it more than a foot decide to create a wooden bottom to lift the soil from the ground (so that it is more like a table with retaining walls) and holes in it to allow for seepage. The raised beds can be made of concrete, stone, brick, and durable wood retaining walls.
Simply think about the type of material that would best accent your home. They aren’t limited to use by the house. They can be used by fencing or along the border of a patio or sidewalk.
Window Planter boxes on the other hand can liven up the windows of a home. They offer beauty both inside and outside for the viewer and provide easy access for watering plants from inside the home.
You can build your own out of sturdy boxes with sturdy wood or metal brackets for hanging. Be sure to paint metal brackets with a rust inhibitor before you hang up the planter boxes.
You don’t want the precious plants to fall or the box to hit someone who may happen to be standing below.