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An Amazing, Low-Cost Way To Create Gorgeous Planters & Baskets!

If you are looking for a way to create gorgeous homemade planters without breaking the bank, we have you covered with today’s article!

We love using planters, potted plants and hanging baskets all over our little farm.

They are a simple and easy way to add instant color, texture and life to any space.

Hanging Impatien Baskets
We love using hanging baskets and container plants everywhere. But creating and keeping baskets filled with annuals like these impatiens can be difficult to maintain for an entire season.

But admittedly, they can get quite expensive to create and maintain. Even if, like us, you plant your own annuals from scratch.

Buying or even growing all of those annual flowers from seed can both be costly and time consuming.

Even more, many annuals are difficult to keep blooming strong for an entire season. They simply grow too fast and run out of room to bloom long before summer is over.

Even if you grow your own annuals from seed, creating and maintaining planters and baskets with annuals can still be quite an expense.

More times than not, many gardeners find themselves replanting their baskets and containers by mid-summer. Costing more time, and even more cash!

A New Approach At The Farm – Creating Gorgeous Planters With A Low-Cost Twist

But this year, we tried a little something different with a large portion of our containers and potted plants.

Instead of using all annuals in all of our baskets and pots, we turned to using many of the existing perennials in our landscape to help fill them up.

It all started in early spring when we found 6 large plant containers in the top of our barn. We had stored the planters a few years back, and had simply forgotten about them.

create gorgeous planters
This small division of a hydrangea plant makes a beautiful container plant, all on it’s own. And with it’s dark green foliage and big blooms, it provides big color all season long!

But with the newly created outdoor areas around the cabin and barn addition, they could certainly be put back to use.

At about the same time, we happened to be splitting and dividing many of our perennials throughout the landscape.

It is something we do each and every spring and fall to create more plants and to help fill beds. (See : How To Create A Beautiful Landscape For Free By Dividing)

create gorgeous planters
We used small splits of our coral bells to create beautiful potted plants for free

And it suddenly occurred to us that instead of running out to buy more annuals to fill them up, we could use some of the small divisions of perennials instead.

And quite honestly, it has worked out better than we ever imagined!

The Advantages of Using Perennials In Containers

First off, there was no cost to us at all. These were existing plants that we simply divided and placed into pots.

Secondly, they didn’t require perfect potting soil to grow. For many, we used a mix of ordinary soil and added in just a bit of potting soil.

We used existing hostas, coral bells and sedum plants, and even a few ornamental grasses to fill containers and baskets all over the farm.

potted hosta plant
One of our potted hosta plants on our back porch.

For some containers, we planted only perennials, While for others, we used a mix of perennials and annuals. We even used some of our small ornamental grasses as “spikes” for some of our annual-planted containers.

Not only have they stayed strong and beautiful all season long, they have been much easier to maintain, requiring less watering and fertilizing.

Recycle, Replant & Reuse – The Best Advantage Of All!

But perhaps best of all is the incredible cost savings and re-usability ( if that is a word) of perennials as potted plants.

Unlike annual flowers, perennials, can of course survive from year to year.

grasses as spikes
We used a few small splits of ornamental grasses in place of traditional spike plants. It gives a lot of height and texture to our large containers.

So this fall, when it comes time to clear out our potted plants and containers, we will simply replant them into the landscape.

And they can be left there to grow, or used again next year. It really is the ultimate win-win of recycle, replant and reuse!

Here is to saving a few dollars and creating your own gorgeous planters from perennials.

For more info on the subject, check out Using Perennials As Potted Plants on our This Is My Garden sister site.

Happy Gardening! Jim and Mary.

Jim and Mary Competti have been writing gardening, DIY and recipe articles and books for over 15 years from their 46 acre Ohio farm. The two are frequent speakers on all things gardening and love to travel in their spare time.

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