Building an herb garden from trash?
There is a delicate balance between storing items one might get use out of later and the amount of storage a person has in their living space. I am currently pretty fortunate that I have space to store things I might use, instead of feeling pressured to throw them away due to lack of space. This is how I ended up with enough random objects to make a Pinterest inspired herb garden without buying anything besides the plants (and a couple of hanging planter liners).
This project of course began with a good long Pinterest scroll to help give me ideas for what to do with the space I wanted to fill. I ended up liking a few of the container garden ideas for small spaces and set off to see what items I had available to work with. Because that was going to determine what I could do with the herb garden.
I found many plastic pots that came with the mums we like to buy every autumn, a stool that is not worth repairing, a hanging planter, a few more plastic pots, a very nice ceramic pot, and a bird feeder post that was damaged a couple of years ago when a giant branch fell on it. With these items assembled I decided on my design.
I began with the ceramic pot and damaged bird feeder post to make a cascading pot stand. I filled the ceramic pot with a lot of stones and then filled in around the stones with packed dirt and water, really making sure that post was secure. I added a second planter on top of the ceramic one, with more rocks, to further anchor the damaged post (you can't see it well in photos, but it's quite bent). I then added the two additional pots to the post, but angled them so they faced to the side. I had to cut holes out of the bottoms of these pots so they would fit on the post. Originally I had planned to add the hanging planter to this post as well… We'll get to it, remember the post is damaged.
Next I grabbed the broken stool. Z had picked up a set of 4 of these from our local buy nothing group with the intent to fix them up.
However, this one was not worth the effort, and we really only have room for 2 of the stools anyway. So this one was sent to the herb garden for me to use! I did not do much to it. I grabbed some extra plank cuttings to make a shelf on the bottom supports, and put one of the plastic pots on it. I have a very cute frog lawn ornament that I added to fill space next to the second plastic pot I placed on top of the stool.
For the third area, I grabbed a spare cinder block (I have no idea where Z got it from) for the base, put a pot on it, and put another pot on that. I have a cute bee trellis that was a birthday gift from a friend last year, so I put that behind the stacked pots. I had ideas of growing butterfly pea vines on it… we'll get to it, keep reading.
Finally I added a few more decorations, and began adding dirt to the pots. I had JUST enough dirt to fill everything. Here's where we get to my first issue. The hanging planter, now filled with dirt was FAR too heavy for my damaged bird feeder post. It pulled it precariously to the side, and with the storms we get around here… it wasn't worth the risk… so I removed it for a while to give myself time to think of a solution. With dirt in the pots, and quite a bit of daylight left, Z and I decided to see what was available at one of our local gardening stores.
I love this store, it's in an urban neighborhood, has a wide range of standard gardening necessities AND they have many native prairie plants available for those (like me) who enjoy having native gardens. They also had just about every herb I was looking for. We ended up bringing home basil, mint, cilantro, parsley, chives, dill, lavender, and nasturtiums. I asked about butterfly pea seeds and they did not have them. They likely would not grow well in my climate anyway, and it's probably best I stick to beginner friendly plants this year. Also… it was Sunday, Sunday afternoon to be exact. We ended up being the last customers to leave the garden center… oops! They were very kind about it, because we were clearly clueless about the time while deciding what nasturtium we wanted to go with (I chose Alaskan variegated btw).
With those home I got to planting! Since I expect the dill, basil, and lavender to grow the tallest, I put those in my bottom most pots. The dill went on the stool shelf, the basil in the ceramic pot at the base of the post, and the lavender in the base pot on the cinder block. I planted the mint in the pot that's on top of the stool, above the dill. I had thought I only got one variety of mint (mojito) however there were two… and you're not supposed to mix mint varieties. After hemming and hawing and checking the labels I determined they are both spearmint varieties. So I don’t think they should alter their taste too much by being planted together. Back to planting! The chives went in the second supporting pot on the post, and above them I put the cilantro in the first angled pot and parsley in the second one. With the lavender on the bottom of my stacked pots on the cinder block, and my decision to not get butterfly pea seeds, I ended up planting two of the six nasturtium plants in the top pot.
Back to that hanging planter. It's already filled with dirt, it can't hang on my post, but I really wanted to add it to this herb garden. I started playing a little with hanging the chains around my fence post above the broken stool. With a little bit of adjustment (shortening one of the chains) it ended up hanging very nicely there, so I plopped the last 4 nasturtium plants in it!
And with that it's done for now! I absolutely plan to add more to it, maybe some more decor, maybe more pots if I want more herbs, but for now I'm really looking forward to having this little garden to take care of this summer. It also felt great to use up some of the things taking up space in the garage, and giving them a purpose again, instead of trashing them.
