Use plants from your garden to arrange a planter to give as a gift to a teacher, friend, or neighbor. These make beautiful gifts!
Hi! I’m Danielle, blogger at DIYDanielle.com, and I love my garden. I’ve invested tons of time and money making a garden that is attractive and comes back year after year. I generally focus on planting edible plants such as mint and berries, but I also have some favorites flowers like lamb’s ear.
This is my crazy front garden at night. I am so in love with it. The berries are behind the privacy fence so my dog can chase the wilds that compete with us for fruit.
How to Make Personalized Pots
Some of my favorite plants are prolific and like to take over the garden. I’ve mostly let them fill in empty spots and save me money on buying new plants, but this year I wanted to use some of them.
Start this project a few weeks or a month ahead of time. This allows you to transfer the plants and water them for a water to make sure they survive the transfer properly.
Supplies
• Potting soil
• Sticks- gather a bunch of straight, thin, sturdy sticks
• Embroidery thread or some type of twine.
• Planter
• Cricut or Silhouette machine, outdoor vinyl, and relevant supplies
• Gardening supplies to dig up your plants plus pretty plants that will survive in a pot.
How to Make this Easy Gift
Begin by adding your outdoor vinyl to your empty planter. These planters were pretty affordable at the local store. I had hoped to find some metal buckets but didn’t find any the size I wanted. I may try to order some online next time I do this. I loveeee the galvanized steel buckets I’ve seen on Pinterest.
If you’re not familiar with the Cricut Machine or projects you can do with it, I have more in-depth tutorials on using the Cricut with outdoor vinyl, which is what you need for this project: What is the Cricut Air 2?
Once you finish adding your vinyl, you need to add something to allow for drainage to the bottom of your pot. You can put holes in the bottom of the planter, or use beads, gravel, etc to allow to water drainage at the bottom.
Fill your planter so it’s 3/4 of the way full of potting soil. You want to leave some space at the top because you still need to put your plants in and your trellis.
Now add your plants, carefully. This is where I like to water the plants for a week or two to make sure they survive. I found that some of my mint plants didn’t transfer well so I just removed them and added new ones. I’m not sure the rhyme or reason behind their survival. I think they did better when I transferred the lamb’s ear, watered and let sit a couple of days, then added the mint after. When you transplant these plants, make sure to water liberally- but don’t over water either.
Before you add the last touches to your project, pinch or snip off leaves that look like they’re browning or dead.
Once the plants looked like they would survive, I added my trellis. My sons and I did some scavenging for some twigs. We wanted nice straight twigs and sticks that appeared to be sturdy. I used three long sticks for the vertical pieces and three thinner, shorter twigs for the horizontal ones.
I stuck the three vertical pieces in between the mint and lamb’s ear plants with about 2” or so between them. Then I wove the three twigs horizontally across them
I didn’t have twine so I used purple embroidery thread to tie each twig onto the trellis. You just wrap it around a few times. I tied a knot in each then cut off the excess thread.
Once you’re finished, you can add a tag with the information about your plants or a card for the person receiving the gift.
I absolutely ADORE how these came out. They’re WONDERFUL and now everyone will be getting plants. Plants for you… and you… and you and you!
What’s your favorite garden plant?
@Danielle, thank you for sharing this awesome idea! I have a cricut but I never thought of personalizing plant pots for people. So easy and inexpensive!
i’ve done a few planters and love them. the outdoor vinyl usually does the trick. i painted a few cat litter buckets too and added vinyl- the paint has come off but not the vinyl lol
Lovely project idea. The inclusion of Lamb’s ear in the planters really makes this a double gift since they can be used at natural antibacterial bandages. I’d print off a lovely descriptive card about the plants in the pot and how to use them and attach it.
i love lambs ear. it’s nice just to touch. not sure how to apply them as bandages but i was reading that this year- we certainly have enough of them to do it!