DIY Flower Containers for Garden Lights
These Flower Containers made into planters are a great way to extend the party into the night with posts that hold garden lights. We were getting our property ready to host a wedding and decided to create a dance floor/garden area to host the social hour.
We had plenty of trees in the area to create the space that we wanted but as you can see, we needed focal points to define the area. Also, a little something to distract the eye away from the fact that there isn't a lot of grass growing here either. There were a few things to consider before we purchased supplies for the project:
1. The size of the space we were working with. Knowing the size of the area you are working in will help you in so many ways. I was working with about 2000sq. ft. and needed several pots to fill the area. In the end I knew I needed about 9 pots and 10-50ft. light strands total.
2. What materials do we need to accomplish the goal . Knowing that we were putting these containers together to create focal points and add color, beauty and functionality to the space made it that much easier to choose our materials.
3. A plan of how it will look when it's finished . Knowing where the containers will be placed is critical. First of all you want to figure out the functionality of how the lights will be hung. We chose to place a 3/4" conduit pipe into the center of the container to string the lights from (more on this later). Second, you want to ask yourself how your lights will illuminate the area. Do you want them to cover the area in a 'tent' format, meaning the lights all start in the center and string to the far corners, for example. There are many ways to hang the lights and if you know what format you want to use in the beginning, it makes it much easier to know how many pots to purchase and how many strands of lights you will need. Once we took the time to figure this out, it was time to purchase supplies. Below is a list of the supplies we needed:
Once the supplies were purchased, we started the process off by finding a level slab to put the containers together.
Below is the list of steps we took:
1-The containers we purchased needed a drainage hole so we drilled a 1-1/4" whole into the bottom of each.
2 - We cut the Plastic Conduit Pipe into 9 - 1ft. pieces to slide into the drainage hole before we poured the concrete into the container.
3 - Once the Plastic Conduit was in place we mixed up the concrete and poured it into the container (about 1/2 the bottom of the container was full). We ended up using about half a bag of concrete for each container. If you use too much concrete in the container, it's hard to handle them or move them around. As the concrete began to harden, we taped the Plastic Conduit into place so it was in an upright, level position. We let them set overnight before we filled them with dirt.
4 - The next morning we filled the remainder of the container with a mixture of (2/3) Top Soil and (1/3) Moisture Plus Potting Mix. You don't need as much Moisture Plus Potting Mix because the peat moss that the plants come in from the nursery is similar so you will want to shake some of that off before you plant them.
The Plants We Used In Our Containers Included:
Ornamental Grass, Dianthus "Bath's Pink", Sweet Woodruff, Purple Sweet Potato Vine, Licorice, Salvia & Green Sweet Potato Vine
5 - When all of the plants were planted we moved the containers into their respective locations based on the 'tent' format that we had decided on in the planning process. Once in place we slid the 3/4" Steel Conduit Pipe into the 1" Plastic Conduit Pipe in the center of the container. We used the Aluminum Wire to secure the Garden Lights to the Steel Conduit and hold them in place.
(see the next few photos for reference)
Overall we were very pleased with how easy the process was and how well the containers secured the lighting for the festivities. Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions regarding the process or instructions above.