Tiered Planter

The front flower beds at our condo are pretty much useless these days as we are in the second year of trying to eradicate Lily of the Valley plants that seem to have take over everything. Ugh! I love flowers so I still wanted to have some to dress up our front entryway. I saw inspiration for a tiered planter (http://www.positivelysplendid.com/2010/05/tiered-terra-cotta-planter.html) that I thought I would try.

As I have said before, I love doing projects as inexpensively as possible and using things I already have at home. For me it is that much more satisfying when I know I have re-purposed something that has just been sitting around my house rather than going out to buy a bunch of new supplies.

For this project I started with three terracotta pots, one of which I had lying around in my garage. You want to have varying sizes, one large, one medium, and one small so they will fit inside each other. I got mine at Jo-Ann Fabrics for a couple dollars each. I went through my spray paint collection and settled on three colors that were vibrant enough for spring and summer and went well together. I painted all threes pots and then used a clear acrylic spray to seal them and give a glossy finish to the pots.

After the pots were painted and dry, I got ready to assemble the planter and do some planting! Here is my arsenal of supplies:

I used some some cans and jars from my recycling bin to help stack the pots and then filled in around them with the potting mix. 

 

Make sure the pots are stable and centered before filling them. Your plants also need to be somewhat small so they fit nicely in the pots. You lose a decent amount of room when you stack them. Mine were a bit large but still worked out just fine. Also, when choosing plants I recommend paying attention to the color and how they will interact with each other and the color of the planters. I chose pink and purple flowers that worked nicely with the magenta purple pot and also some green leafy plants that played off of the green pot. I also try to pay attention to where I am putting those colors. The bright flowering plants went on the bottom and really pop against the green, and the green leafy ones went on the top to contrast with the purple and white. 

The finished result: