Beds for bedding: Novel ideas for planters in your home

Gardening is all about layering, and there are few things more satisfying than containers for an instant hit of colour, depth and interest.

Try your hand at some DIY projects. Keep in mind, that planted formality balanced to salvaged materials, often works best to avoid a junkyard feel.

There are some pieces of furniture that though unsuited to the great outdoors, with a little shelter, will last as containers and fascinating staging for a few seasons before complete collapse. Timber, with the exception of pressure and chemically-treated boards riddled with copper compounds, will degrade.

Old chairs — sure, everyone has one quietly dying in the garage are ideal —set ground-creeping plants directly into the upholstery of a pretty fat armchair (secret pockets of soil or small containers), or weave aerials into punctured rush woven seating.

Desert-loving plants like succulents can thrive like scattered jewels in very little soil.

For an easy start, pick up an old dining chair with a removable seat, give it a lash of outdoor timber paint and set a large pot into the frame. Another approach: saw off the front legs, and hang the remainder of the old chair directly on a wall (the back legs will act as a brace — ensure the frame can still support your chosen pot. Add L-shaped brackets to the joints if needed. Flowering annuals and geraniums give a charming cottage feel.

With the European Commission poised to ban single-use plastics gardening pots, tin cans are set to shine. With a hammer and nail to the base for drainage, they make excellent tiny planters, but mind children’s fingers on those potentially sharp edges.

Due to their size, grouping really takes the creative lid off tin can containers. Knock up a simple, airy open frame window box from DIY wood off-cuts, or lengths of driftwood, and give your cans a single or harlequin paint treatment.

Pack in a troop planted up with annuals from seed. We love Ronseal Garden Paint in Wellington Boot & Purple Berry, from €21 for 2.5l, nationwide.

For something rebellious, save those metal 5l paint tins, strip the labels, and give them a light crash with a hammer to make them asymmetric. Drizzle your choice of colour as if dripped during use down from the top edge over the shiny metal. Plop in a pot (primaries look fantastic or go to gold). Group in 3s and 5s.

Glass jars are a nice recycled option for terrariums — the current rage —just mind that drainage. There’s plenty of advice online for creating tiny environments inside large glass vessels.

Use slices of log to the base and a touch of rope to dress up recycled jars and bottles.

Single iron bed frames are often way too small for an adult and imperfect as a child’s bed due to mattress sizing. Again, an easy find at auction (look out for the irons if you want the bed complete). Use that vertical thrust of the head end ad a trellis to lift your planting and to frame and support areas of your ground-based plants — be they drifting annuals or pretty climbers. Don’t fuss it.

Clean the surfaces down and apply a paint over rust-style paint product like Hammerite (touch dry in an hour), €19 for 750l. Make your bed anywhere it suits and even move it as needed. Dig out an area of lawn and stage the bed right there, indicating drifting quilts of flowers as it’s established.

Where you don’t have the side irons, bed heads and ends can be used directly on the wall (secure firmly), or as light fencing with suitable struts.

My favourite? A high bed head attached to a timber or fresh white wall, all set behind a backless bench — an instant pretty bishop’s seat worthy of Jane Austen, and a superb place for south facing (thorn-less) bower of climbers. Use a rectangular tin trough on feet instead of the bench if you prefer a planter arrangement.

Old leather walking boots are like ancient hide, and take years to completely fall apart. Curated with a polite plant, they can stand around the patio or be hung up in a staggered pair. Invest in some long high top boot laces and use them to suspend — your nearest charity shop mya have nicely distressed boots. More recently, breathable canvas high top sneakers are appearing on Pinterest, and, with a casual slop of water based paint, can be set up on wall tops or at the edges of raised beds. They have a baggier, saggy finish, but at a few euro a pair second hand, who can argue?

Up cycle your old six inch designer heels or charity shop finds, tarted back to a shine with leather colour, as planters. This is a fun idea to trot out on a dining table for a spring or summer party using star-shaped succulent rosettes and the right medium. Plant into the toe with one large rosette or using moss and sandy substrate, go right up the shoe in low and light planting. Ensure you pierce the sole to allow for drainage.

Overhead? Pick up an old metal chandelier with supports for candles (spokes and dishes). Using light plastic pots stabbed onto the spokes, mount gorgeous trailing plants up on the branches.

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