Fall Planter

Yesterday between the pumpkin patch and a birthday party I made a fall planter for my front porch.  It was such a great day!!  I love the way that my planter turned out!  I really don't feel like all the pictures do it justice.  Even my husband commented on the planter and that it looked nice.  That's big stuff, he doesn't notice much when it comes to details...

Saturday I went to a fall planting class at Wilson's Nursery (visit their website here).  At the class I made this sweet little pumpkin.  You could use this as a table centerpiece or as an outside decoration.  My kitchen table doesn't get a lot of sunlight so I'm keeping him outside unless I host something.  When I left I could wait to make a larger version for my porch.

The planter that I made looks like a lot which equals difficulty for some people -- it's super easy, promise!  I used a mixture of fall flowers.  These are all pretty hardy so they will survive lower temperatures.  But I also found out about this spray that you can purchase and it helps your plants when the temperatures get below freezing. 

I'm going to work around in a clockwise movement to tell you about the flowers that I bought.  We'll start at the top with the yellow mum.  You could of course get any color.  Right beside the mum is a pepper plant.  I got a purple version, they had red and yellow as well.  Then I got some pansies.  The white ones are trailing pansies, they will come down my pot and then the purple/blue ones are just your normal pansies.  The white thing that's in the middle is euphorbia, then I have heuchera (the purple thing), I lost the label for the green thing, but it's just a trailing plant.  There are more pansies, a cabbage and some wheat.  All of these flowers are annuals but they should last me for a while.  You could get any mixture of things.  In the pumpkin one I used lettuce and some fresh herbs so it's practical. 

I didn't have an urn or pot to put the plants in so I had to get one for my vision.  I really wanted a tall pedestool urn to put on each side of my door.  No luck though.  And I'm not an orderer, I want it when I want it.  I ended up going with one large urn that is sitting to the left of my step to get on the porch.  My porch is off center so it worked to just have one large pot and to place it on the larger side of the porch.  I got my urn at Garden Ridge for half price (yay!).  Since I didn't have a base to start with I had to buy more flowers.  A friend of mine made hers and she was able to save some of her summer plants that still looked good. 

I started by filling my urn with potting soil.  It took a bunch of potting soil.  I filled it basically to the top of the urn.  Then I started with my tallest thing, the wheat.  When you are putting your tall thing in there you don't really want to put it right in the center of the pot.  I put mine further back and to the left a little bit.  The next thing that I planted was the cabbage.  The trick to that is that you don't want to plant it straight up and down.  it won't be very pretty at all.  Instead, you want to place it at an angle.  Here's a picture of mine.  If I had planted it upright then it would have taken up more room and you would see the ugly stem.  Not exactly the look that I was going after. 

Once my cabbage was planted I finished by placing all of my other large plants.  I did the mum, the euphorbia, peppers and the heuchera.  When I planted those I also angled them.  The mum that I picked out was flat on one side.  If I wanted to plant them in the ground then it wouldn't be very pretty.  But because my mum was going around other plants the flat side was perfect. 

The last flowers that I planted was the green vine thing (real official) and the pansies.  The pansies were used as fillers.  I just plugged them in wherever I had a bald spot or a place where it needed something.  Here are some pictures of my planter moving around.  I planted all the way around.  That way, no matter where you are looking it is pretty.  If I put it against the house then I may not have worked as hard on the back.  All of my spots filled in nicely.  But if you had a bare spot or you didn't want to invest the money in the flowers then you could use a pumpkin and plop him in planter somewhere.  It would add a very nice touch. 

I have my tall things from the wheat, then the mums and peppers were a little shorter.  When I worked at a flower shop I learned that your design needs to be in the shape of a triangle.  It can be any type of triangle basically but it needs to somehow form a triangle.  At the planting workshop they talked about how it needs to be like a waterfall, it will have it's tall spots then it flows down.  With either description you will have something beautiful.  My angle for the picture isn't too good but here is a picture with the finished urn and my pumpkin on my front porch.  I need to work on my other planter that's on the other side but I don't have it in my to kill or pull up the flowers that are still blooming right now. 

I'd love to see pictures if you make a fall planter!

Happy planting,
Meghan