Love it? Plant it! Garden planters you’ll adore

Garden furniture is one thing. Planting is another, an instant sort of way to soften your outdoor entertainment area, add colour and even add extra flavour to your alfresco life. Here are some bright ideas for garden planters, good-looking options that are designed for the job and support good plant health.

So why would you want to plant up some garden planters with green and colourful stuff? For a start planters give you a simple, lovely-looking way to create boundaries for an enclosed garden seating or eating area so it feels more cosy, more like you’re in a room outdoors than exposed and sprawly.

Then there’s the scent. Surround your entertainment space with planters stuffed with fragrant things and you’ll be whisked heaven-wards on a cloud of gorgeous smells every time you relax outside. Think freesias, curry plant, nemesia, scented geranium, gardenias and daphne, lavender and all sorts of other easy-grow fragrant plant treats.

It’s also a colour thing. Fill the space with vibrant clashing colours for a cheerful, vivid display or do things tastefully with a choice of three colours or even just one. A series of planters filled with pure white blooms, or all blue, or all pink looks simply amazing, full of drama. You can even fill the planters with bulbs that come up in spring then once they’ve stopped flowering, add a load of annuals for a summer-long display that can carry on through the whole of autumn depending on the weather. Common climbing nasturtiums will keep on climbing and flowering until the first frost, amazing value and super-easy to grow with no maintenance. They seed too, so you get free seed to sow the next year.

Leaves are just as beautiful as flowers. Growing tall foliage in planters can give you a handy, easy instant barrier for extra privacy. Low-profile foliage can be equally lovely. Think Lambs Ears and Dusty Miller, both ‘glaucous’ plants with pale blue-green-silver foliage. Black Mondo grass is amazing, sheer drama. Hardy Cordylines have vibrant foliage in purples, oranges, reds and more. Tri-colour Sage doesn’t just look good, it tastes great as well. And Croton is ridiculously colourful, looking more like something man-made than natural. Along the same lines there’s the super-colourful Coleus, which comes in a load of vivid varieties. Don’t miss out on mint, which comes in all sorts of scents including chocolate mint for a refreshing tang.

And that brings us to food. If you like to cook outdoors, a handy planter full of herbs will give you all the flavour you need, out in the garden, exactly where you need it and totally fresh every time. Cram some scented Borage leaves into your Pimms and lemonade if you like, or add fresh mint to a glass of alcoholic chilled tea. Nom! As well as flavour the herbs will also give you lots of lovely scent, especially when the sun shines on them and warms the leaves.

We sell some lovely coloured planters in different finishes. Because they’re made from real wood you can easily touch up or even repaint them altogether to complement your garden furniture. When you’re planting foliage for the look of the leaves you can add extra colour by painting your planters in a bold pink, orange, purple or blue for dramatic contrast.

A plant shelf is an excellent idea, giving you the chance to grow trailing plants and create a living wall of colour, great for adding privacy.

If you’ve invested in some of our glorious grey garden furniture, you can create a stunning matching look by painting your existing pottery, wood and concrete planters a toning or contrasting grey. You might be into alternative planters, using all sorts of recycled and repurposed items to plant things in… in which case you could paint them all the same colour to create a powerfully stylish impact.

Stacks of old car tyres might sound a bit out-there but when they’re all painted deep grey and filled with vibrant blooms, the effect is amazing. You can even colour old plastic plant pots, giving them a whole new lease of life using leftover exterior house paint. Or cover them with fabric, glueing it on using PVA. Or stack up and glue some breezeblocks together with No More Nails exterior glue, using them as big bricks to make a rectangular or square planter, then paint the whole thing. Once the planter is full of blooms and the foliage spills over the edges, it’ll look gorgeous.

Keep an eye on our planters, see what comes along next. Then cram yours with colour and… enjoy!