DECOR : Houseplants Shed Their Contained Image
By nature, houseplants bring life to a room. They can be all the more lively if they shed their traditional containers for something unexpected.
Unusual pots can put the familiar in a new context, turning a houseplant into a witty home accessory. They’re also a fine way to recycle containers gathering dust on closet shelves.
One of the first places to look for off-beat containers is the kitchen. Canned tomato tins can be used as planters for herbs that flavor homemade tomato sauce, and sardine tins for tiny crocus bulbs, says Rebecca Cole, owner of a New York shop specializing in potted plants and antiques. A plastic canister set, she says, is an attractive start for a kitchen herb garden.
Flea markets, yard sales and neighborhood resale shops also yield unusual containers, says Carol Schalla, editor of an Illinois-based design magazine. On one expedition, she found an electric mixer with a jade-ware mixing bowl.
“It was beat up, but I thought, ‘I’ve got to have it, but I’ve got to have a reason for having it,”’ Schalla says. “Then the idea of putting a trailing plant in it occurred to me.”
The mixer was the seed for a magazine story, and Schalla went on the prowl for other creative pots for ordinary plants. She slipped a potted fern into an old handbag, and she filled a rack of glass test tubes with water and cuttings of spider plants and ivy. She planted rosemary, oregano, sage, parsley and mint in jade-ware cups and saucers and set them on an old-fashioned plant stand.
Cole, also a frequenter of flea markets, has turned old tool boxes, milk crates and soda-bottle cases into planters for geraniums and other flowering plants. She’s been known to turn old suitcases, large washtubs and early washing machines, minus the wringers, into containers for plants for living rooms and terraces.
Finding a container is just the beginning.
“Every piece of junk you find and want to use as a container presents a different problem,” Cole says. “The solution is being imaginative and also knowing the requirements of the individual plants.”
Cole waterproofs the containers by lining them with heavy-duty plastic garbage bags. Then she either fills them with potting soil and repots the plants or sets them in, pot and all, and surrounds them with moss.
“Soil mix can get expensive if you are filling large containers,” Cole says. “I make my own mix: one part packaged soil, one part vermiculite, one part peat moss.”
Instead of rocks, broken crockery or gravel for drainage, she uses plastic foam packing peanuts, which are much lighter. Or, if the container is suited to it, she pokes holes in the bottom and sets it in a dinner plate to catch runoff.
If you mix several types of plants in one container, which adds visual interest, they should have similar water, soil and light requirements. Otherwise, portions of the arrangement will wither while others are thriving.
