Whether you want to plant a few potted plants around your deck or undertake a more expansive garden overhaul, consider repurposing unwanted items into useful garden planters.

We all know that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure and that is certainly true for the creative gardener. Instead of investing money in fancy store-bought planters, reuse items that would normally end up in the landfill in your garden to make a green (and inexpensive) statement.

13 Ideas for Repurposed Garden Planters

1. Tire Hanging Garden – Have a tire swing in your yard that is no longer getting any attention? Repurpose it into a hanging annual planter for a quick way to add some color to your backyard.

2. Library Card Catalog Drawers – If you are lucky enough to come across old library card catalog drawers, turn them into retro chic tabletop garden planters.

3. Wheelbarrow – If your wheelbarrow develops holes or begins to rust, you can turn it into a planter. Simply lay down some landscaping fabric to plug up any holes and fill with soil, compost, and plants.

4. Vintage Cooler – Oftentimes it’s possible to come across retro drink coolers at flea markets. They work pretty well as garden planters for larger plants.

5. Old Rain Gutters – Instead of tossing old rain gutters, repurpose them into functional garden planters. Not only will it keep something with some practical use left in it out of the landfill, but it’s certainly a creative planter idea.

6. Teacups – Delicate teacups are the perfect garden planter for small plants like succulents or pretty annuals. Decorate your deck with pretty vintage teacup planters to make a wonderfully green statement sure to make even the Queen proud.

7. Toolbox – Whether the old wooden style or a newer metal box, a toolbox is a great planter size for planting an herb garden or some pretty perennials.

8. Kitchen Sink – Yes, everything, including the kitchen sink, can be repurposed into a functional garden planter. The only thing holding you back is your imagination.

9. Mason Jar Planters – Mason jars are pretty easily found at thrift shops and can be used as planters for a small herb garden. You can even use them to create a hanging herb garden as well.

10. Washtubs and Buckets – If you come across old galvanized washtubs or buckets, snap them up. They make for great garden planters.

11. Birdbath – While you you don’t want to steal the birdbath from the birds, you can certainly turn an extra one into a decorative succulent garden planter.

12. Baskets – Baskets of all kinds and shapes can work as repurposed garden planters. They are also ubiquitous at flea markets, yard sales, and thrift shops.

13. Filing Cabinet Drawers – Making the switch from paper to digital records? Don’t trash that old filing cabinet, but repurpose it into a clever garden planter instead.

Related on EcoSalon

6 Planter Ideas Using Funky and Unusual Items
DIY on the Fly: Mason Jar Herb Garden Planters in 6 Steps
17 Clever Repurposed Garden Planters to Add More Plants to Your Space

Tire as Planter, Wheelbarrow Decorative Planter, Herbs in Mason Jar, Wicker Basket Planter, and Red Mum in a Teacup via Shutterstock

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Spring is the time of year when our minds turn towards planting. Springtime bulbs, summertime vegetable gardens and autumn pumpkin patches–all have their origins in the early springtime with the bevvy of seed catalogs that come in the mail. While you are coming up with your plans, don’t forget to think about garden planters.

Garden planters can be easy and clever ways to incorporate plants both inside and outside your home. Whether nasturtiums on your deck or an herb garden on your kitchen windowsill, planters can be a great alternative.

Not only can containers be easier to manage and add visual interest to your home, they are also great ways to repurpose items that might end up in the trash or the recycling bin. In addition, using planters offers versatility, because planters can be moved around–that is unless you are using huge planters.

Image: karenblakeman

Here are some great ideas for repurposing goods as planters both inside and outside your home.

1. Use an old colander as a clever succulent planter.
2. Turn wooden wine boxes into a patio salad garden with this project idea.
3. How pretty is this vintage bread box planter?
4. Got an unused tackle box? Make it into a smart planter.
5. Don’t trash that old bureau, turn into a succulent planter instead.
6. Use leftover galvanized steel heating and air repair materials as pretty planters.
7. Old paint cans can make great small planters.
8. Reuse coffee cans as fun and colorful cactus planters.
9. Turn an old chandelier into a hanging planter.
10. Repurpose an unwanted suitcase for new meaning to the phrase container garden.
11. Even turn old soup ladles into succulent planters.
12. Cinder block bricks get a redo as useful planters.
13. Turn a teapot into a pretty planter for your favorite posies.
14. Use an empty wine bottle as a clever planter.
15. Drawers from an unwanted piece of furniture can be turned into stylish planters.
16. Repurpose pallets as vertical planters.
17. Give boring planters the boot, use old boots as planters!

Finally, container gardening does have it’s challenges., so once you’ve settled on your containers, read up about the process using these resources.

• Organic Gardening’s Guide to Container Gardening
• University of Illinois Extension Successful Container Gardens
• Colorado State Extension Container Gardening

Related on EcoSalon

Plant Tulips, Hyacinths and Daffodils Now to See Them in Spring

5 Fresh Ways to Bring Spring Indoors

OMG, Really? Luxury Blinged Out Garden Tools for the Organic Gardener

Top Image: rustiqueart

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ColumnThere is more to micro-gardens than just food.

Have a few plants that you tend to? Then you have a micro-garden. It’s a thing, of course.

As NPR’s The Salt explains, “The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has lately been talking about micro-gardens as critical way to help the urban poor get more food on the table. The FAO defines micro-gardens intensively cultivated small spaces — such as balconies, small yards, patios and rooftops. Many rely on containers such as plastic-lined wooden boxes, trash cans and even old car tires.”

While most of us aren’t going to base our entire diet off of the small harvest we get from our plants, contributing in some small way–no matter how small–to what you eat, is a rewarding thing. Basil, mint, kale; these plants aren’t going to keep me fed all summer long – and if my homegrown kale was required to save the world, we’d be waiting for a very long time – but every morning when I wake up and look to see if they have grown a bit overnight, I feel happy.

Just like with food, there is beauty in simplicity, and as such, the payoffs are always greater than what you envision as you set off on your planting adventures.

Although I grew up with a large garden, I am not a gardening master. My small potted plants that constitute my urban micro-garden are a foray into trying to grow at least a few things that are edible and partake in the amazing process of watching something go from seed to food. But this also means that whenever a new bud pops up in one of the pots, I am hesitant to pull it. Anything that manages to grow on a 4th floor window balcony is a sacred thing. So I give it a few days, and if it appears to be a weed I will then get rid of it. But if it looks interesting, it stays.

This has, of course, been the unexpected delight of tending plants with homegrown compost; you never know what seeds from the food you eat are going to make it into your dirt. Which is how a little green spurt that was deemed “not a weed” soon grew to larger proportions.

I had to send a photo to my mother for verification: “is this a tomato plant?”

The fact that maybe I had a tomato plant randomly growing on my tiny urban window balcony seemed to good to be true.

“Definitely a tomato plant!” my mother the well-trusted gardener wrote back.

Great.

While the poor little red-leafed basil plant that I have been trying to nurse into adulthood sits looking depressed with its tiny little leaves, a tomato, whose planting I had nothing to do with, decides to take root and flourish. Obviously I have much to learn about gardening.

That little red-leafed basil had been purchased a couple of months earlier at the weekend organic market. With a small window balcony for planting, trying to get basil going is more of a comfort than a food thing. If you want to make pesto, you’re going to have to go and buy full bunches at the market. But having a basil plant is pleasing, and adding a few leaves here and there to a few dishes is very satisfying. Hence the desire for a little basil plant.

But the red-leafed basil never did very well. For the last two months it sat there, on the verge of death, but refusing to completely die off. I was determined though. I propped it up, I watered it, I talked to it; nothing helped. It remained a depressed looking little plant.

Until the tomato showed up. Now, the tomato plant is almost a foot tall and the basil plant is thriving.

“Do you think they have some kind of symbiotic relationship?” I asked my friend Emily.

“Well yeah, plants need friends too,” she responded.

It’s true.

Plants do need good companions to do we well in life (it’s called “companion planting“). And just like us, they need the right ones. As the seed company Burpee out it “relationships between plants are varied – similar to relationships between people. In plant communities, certain plants support each other while others, well, just don’t get along.”

Luckily, as it turns out, tomato and basil are best friends in the plant world.

Funny how this little micro-garden is a reminded of how we’re not much different than plants. We need to be taken care of, enough sun, enough water. And we all need a companion to thrive. Be it a friend, a partner, or just someone to drink coffee in the afternoon with. Life lessons from your micro-garden.

There’s a tomato plant popping up in my kale planter now, too. And in the other basil pot. I’ll let them stay.

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Anna Brones

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