Growing plants is a fun and rewarding project, and creating DIY planters to showcase your plants can be part of the fun. Anything that can hold soil and has drainage holes in the bottom can be used as a planter.
Take a walk around your house and look at objects from a gardener’s perspective to find containers suitable to hold plants. Think outside the box (or consider using a box as a DIY planter!) and discover new gardening uses for unused containers.
Add beauty, flair, and a splash of personality to your indoor or outdoor garden with one of these 9 best DIY planters.
1. Wooden Drawer Tree Planter
So you have an old chest of drawers, nightstand, or dresser that has seen better days and no longer needed for its original purpose? Recycle the wooded drawers into an attractive painted DIY planter.
Remove the bottom from all but one drawer and stack them straight up on top of each other to create one deep planter. Add a coat of paint and you’ll have a deep planter for a lemon tree, ficus tree, or other large tree or plant.
2. Stacked Drawers
Leave the bottom in 3-4 metal or wooden drawers, remove the hardware and paint each drawer a different color. Stack the drawer catty-cornered and plant something different in each drawer. Great way to recycle old drawers and maximize garden space.
3. Tire Planters
Big or little, stacked to any height, old tires can be recycled in useful DIY planters. Paint them and plant them for a whimsical touch in the landscape or garden. Stacked tires is a great way to create raised beds for growing vegetables and flowers.
If you’re creative, the rubber tires can be carved into various shapes and used as hanging planters.
4. Hat Planters
Old straw hats and baseball caps can be transformed into DIY planters and used to adorn a boring privacy fence. Fill a small plastic container with potting soil and cut a hole in one end of the hat. Cover the container with the hat, lining up the cut end of the hat with the open end of the container. Attach to a vertical structure and plant a trailing vine in the container to make it look like the vine is going out of the hat.
5. Rain Boot DIY Planter
A leaky rain boot is ideal for recycling into a DIY planter. The rain boot will easily stand up and hold potting soil and the leak will provide the needed drainage for the soil. Use a collection of different boot colors to create an eye-catching row of planters.
6. Purse Planters
Gather up some old purses and create a colorful collection of hanging DIY planters. Line the interior of the purses with landscape fabric or coir to hold the potting soil, then place potting soil and a plant inside. Contrast the plant color with the purse color for the biggest impact of color.
7. Shoe Bag Planter
This is a great idea for an herb garden - you can grow a wide variety of herbs in just one hanging shoe bag. Plant a different herb in each pouch and hang it up in a sunny location. The shoe bag makes watering and harvesting easy too.
8. Recycled Kitchen Items
Coffee cans, cracked colanders, old roasting pans, or stained plastic bowls can be given a new life as DIY planters. Leave the kitchen item as-is or add a coat of spray paint and plant with your favorite flower, vegetable, or herb plant.
9. Recycled Plastic Bottles
Make DIY planters for a vertical garden or hanging planters from recycled plastic bottles. Large soda bottles, water bottles, milk jugs, and juice jugs are easy to reuse for growing plants and it will help keep some of the plastic out of the landfill.
