These suc­cu­lents are planted into hol­lowed out mush­room table funghi.

Gardeners get to be good at find­ing objects to plant into. You don’t always have the per­fect pot at hand when a plant needs a home. You might be plan­ning a gar­den on a shoe­string, so you make do with what’s lying around the house. Gardeners have been known to repur­pose any hol­low object we might discover.

My first roof gar­den many years ago was made in part with milk crates lined with plas­tic. Red plas­tic milk crates are not par­tic­u­larly attrac­tive on their own, but I dis­guised the out­side with bam­boo cur­tain blinds. Good thing about crates is they hold a lot of soil, and stack nicely.

Metal pots attached with ordi­nary hard­ware to a fence. Easy peasy.

Nowadays I col­lect any­thing metal, like old alu­minum wash buck­ets for  planters. They look great clus­tered together. I have a pas­sion­flower in one that actu­ally has rollers on the bot­tom, and a sturdy han­dle, use­ful when I have to move it.

I found these metal sap buck­ets attached to a fence with ordi­nary hard­ware. What sorts of non-traditional con­tain­ers have you found use­ful, and what’s the cra­zi­est thing you’ve used to give a plant a home? What worked? What didn’t?

Related posts:

1. Plant Insurance: Buy One That’s Had TLC
2. Living Garden Sculpture: Castor Bean Plant
3. Mafalda & Clara’s Italian Stuffed Artichokes
4. Garden In the City
5. Welcome Back Gardeners