Most of us have a few extra plants leftover after we’ve squeezed in as many annuals and perennials as possible in to our spring garden beds and containers. A fun way to use those extras is to plant them up and share them with your peeps!
Spring plants in a basket make a wonderful hostess gift, liven up a front porch, and add a much needed burst of spring color to your decor. And, with Easter and Mother’s Day fast approaching, these will be the perfect gift.
A Simple Spring Garden Basket
Search your stash of old baskets, clay pots, or any kind of bowl or container that you have around, to make it simple.
Use some landscape fabric or coco mat to line a basket to help keep the soil in place and still allow for drainage when watering. Pop in a couple of annuals, a perennial or two, add some moss or twigs and you’ll have a beautiful spring garden basket!
By adding perennials, they can then be planted in the ground to be enjoyed again next year.
Some favorite early season garden annuals are impatiens, pansies, petunias, marigolds, begonias, and geraniums. Perennials include coral bells, hellebores, lantana, phlox, and dracaena spikes. Tuck in a sweet potato vine, morning glory, or creeping jenny. An herb such as mint, basil, or thyme, is another fun one to add, making the basket smell as wonderful as it looks!
Forget about the old thriller, filler, spiller routine for this project. Just use whatever you have leftover and voila! A lovely spring garden basket is complete.
There are a couple of ways to put your basket together. Keeping things super simple leave plants in the nursery pots so there’s no need to transplant. This is especially helpful if the lucky person you are giving it to is a gardener so they can easily plant in their yard if they wanted.
Arrange pots in your basket, and cover the top with moss to hide the pots. Or, since your hands are already covered in soil from all of the planting you have done, remove plants from their nursery pots, arrange in basket, fill in with potting soil, and top with moss or twigs.
Be sure to give your plants a good drink of water! Include the plant tags so the recipient will know what the plants are and how to care for them.
And there you have it! Use up those extra plant beauties and make someone smile today!