Most of the plants in our garden are in
terracotta pots. Potted plants can be moved around until they find their happy place. We're still working on making planting beds which is a lot of work in this sandy Florida soil. It's much easier to find a pot, fill it with medium and put the plant in it. I used to mix my own planting mix using top soil, manure, some peat moss soaked in water and vermiculite, but now I'm lazy and just buy bagged potting mix for all but the orchids.
My handy husband, Wayne, is a yard sale meyven and has, more than once, found a bonanza of clay pots at a sale. We have them cleaned and stacked in a shed and under the orchid tables waiting for just the right plant. Recently, our favorite family run nursery,
Duncheon's, ran a "buy one get one free" sale. Wayne went there every weekend for the month of the sale and picked up at least two beautiful pots each time, mostly glazed in cobalt blue, my favorite color. Here are some of the yard sale finds waiting under the orchid table...
When clay pots break, fix them. You can
Frankenstein them with a drill and some wire. Wayne fixed a bunch more cracked pots and experimented with copper and steel wire twisted together. Copper wire alone was too soft, but twisted with steel, was aesthetically pleasing and strong enough to hold.
We put butterfly attracting annuals in the cut off bottom of an old compressor tank.
Just about anything you once used in your house to hold something can be used in your garden to hold a plant...colanders, those 3 tier wire hanging things that you put your onions or bread in, fire place grates, cans, teapots, bathroom fixtures. Great examples of this can be found in Garden Decoration from Junk
by Leeann Mackenzie. My neighbor, Melinda, has herbs planted in an old bathtub in her backyard. And what exactly do you do with the circa 1969 turquoise toilet you had to replace with a white low-flow model, because they don't make them in turquoise? Put it in the garden and plant flame ginger in it. I'm still thinking about what I want to plant in the top part of it. It has to be something that likes shade and will cascade over the sides. I'll put cans in the bottom of the tank, so it won't take so much soil to fill it. Caliope gives the toilet her seal of approval.
I mentioned in a previous post the cool chiminea we saved from a neighbor's trash. It holds a candle and has an orchid on top. It's a nice place to display any of our orchids currently in bloom.
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