Create Your Own Hanging Baskets of Blooming Color

by Pat Diaz, from the June 2004 Newsletter

We all admire the beautiful hanging baskets of flowers at nurseries, but sometimes the cost is more than a person can pay. So, you can create your own hanging basket and have it look great. Here are a few tips:

1. Where can I hang my baskets for optimum effect? Hanging baskets look wonderful in many places – entrance areas, house walls and near doorways, porches, patios and decks, and interior courts.
2. What is the right container? There are a couple of considerations for choosing the proper container. The plants that you choose, the atmosphere in which you will hang your container, and the decor or architecture of your house can determine what you choose. Hanging containers come in several different kinds of materials – plastic, wood, metal, pottery, moss-lined wire, galvanized tubs, and wicker baskets. Consider the weight of your container, too, when deciding where it will hang. Heavy pots, such as pottery and clay, need lots of support and big hooks as they can weigh anywhere from 25-50 pounds when filled with soil and plants. Watering your containers also adds weight. A big advantage to a large container, however, is that it holds more plants which helps keep roots moist longer, and you don’t have to water as often as you would if you had more small pots. Some pots dry out faster too, such as the clay ones, so consider that when choosing containers. The most important factor, though, is to make sure your container has excellent drainage.
3. What plants should I choose? Again, there can be lots of considerations when choosing plants – amount of sun, colors you’d like to feature, how long can the plants be, and whether you want green foliage as well as blossoms. Different plants can also give a different decorating “flavor” to your home, depending on whether you’d like a tropical, English cottage garden, Southwestern, or maybe a Victorian look.

Not all plants need to be the trailing or hanging kind. Use upright ones in your container as well. Those should be planted in the middle, with the hanging plants around the edges.

When picking color, you can have a riot of bold color, a serene selection of pastels, maybe blues and lavenders together, or use the color wheel to help you decide. Whatever your choice, keep it simple and don’t try to mix too many colors in one container.

Different plants have different sun requirements and different watering needs. This is very important when choosing the types of plants to put together into the same container. I’ll give you some suggestions about that in a minute.

4. Planting the basket. You’ll need lightweight potting mix, including some peat moss and vermiculite to provide aeration and drainage. To make your own soil, combine two parts peat moss, two parts perlite/vermiculite, and one part compost. An 8-inch container usually holds 3-4 plants, and a 14-inch pot can hold 6-8 plants. Wire baskets can hold more plants, so plant them 3-5” apart, and from the sides and bottom as well as the top. Coverage is important on wire baskets because they’re not that attractive unless covered by plants.
   Fill a pot 2/3 full of soil and arrange the plants on top until you like the arrangement. Plant the largest and center plants first, then smaller ones, and the edge plants last. Fill the pot with more soil, firmly press, and water to settle the plants and soil. To plant a wire basket, line the basket with a thick layer of wet sphagnum moss (or you can use a pre-formed liner), then fill with soil and water; let it settle and drain. Poke holes in the bottom and sides, then firmly insert the plants’ root balls. Next do the center of the basket. Remember that strong sunlight and wind will dry your containers out quickly. Feed your plants once a week with water-soluble fertilizer or 1-2 times a month with time-released fertilizer.
5. Plant choices – For sun, choose black-eyed Susan, catmint, French marigold, lobelia, nasturtiums, portulacas, and verbena. For partial shade, choose alyssum, begonias, coleus, creeping Jenny, fuchsias, geraniums, impatiens, pansies, periwinkle, primroses, violas. For foliage, choose ferns, grasses, ivy, mints. Good trailing plant choices include Italian bellflower, lobelia, Lotus maculatus, million bells, and Scaevola aemula.
6. First aid – Watering is THE most important key to success. If the soil dries out completely, you will need to rehydrate by dunking the entire container in a large tub of water until the soil is saturated. Lift the container out and drain before re-hanging.

Copyright: Copyright on articles, recipes and images are jointly held by the Moscow Food Co-op and the respective contributors, except were otherwise noted.

Return to Resource Archive

For additions or corrections to this page, please contact the Webmaster.