How To: Outdoor Flower Pot Arrangements

I always love wandering around Home Depot and Armstrong Garden Center to buy flowers (of course!) and to admire their beautiful flower pot arrangements. I’ve always wanted to create my own and just finished my first! I would love to share with you how you can make your very own fall outdoor flower pot arrangements.

Ideas

Before you do anything, I would wander around local garden centers and do some online research on what you want your arrangement to look like. What colors do you want to use? Do you want to grow one type of flower or use different types of flowers?

You also want to think about how much money you can spend on this project. Prices vary widely on containers, based on the size and material used. If you are like me, you have a budget to stay under.

I had a container whose previous plants didn’t fare so well, so I didn’t have to think about buying a new one. The container I used cost $10 at Home Depot. It has a nice, simple design and is made of plastic, although it looks as if it were made of more expensive material.

The flowers I chose to plant are chrysanthemums. Armstrong Garden Center was selling the one pint-sized mums for only $1 each, so I had fun picking out which type and colors to buy. I also feature mums in my post, How to Start a Garden from Scratch.

Since the flowers were the only items I needed to buy for this project, this activity cost me a whopping $5. If you know of anyone who thinks gardening is expensive, send them my way so I can show them how cost effective it can be!

Container

If you don’t have a container ready to use, you also want to think about what kind of container you want to buy. The size of your container will determine how many flowers you may want to get. You can get more ideas on what kind of containers to use in Cheap Garden Containers.

Are you going to use a square, round, oval, or other shaped container? This may determine what types of flowers you will choose for your design. I love the symmetrical look of circular pots, so I used a circular container I already had on my balcony.

For a smaller container, you may only have room for two flowers. For a larger container, you can add more flowers based on the size of the plants. The possibility of design is endless!

Flowers

After you decide what kind of container to hold your outdoor flower pot arrangement in, you want to choose some flowers. You might want to do this step before getting a container. If there are particular flowers you want to put in an arrangement, you will want to do this step first.

I had a vague plan of what I wanted my outdoor flower pot arrangement to look like. When I went to Armstrong Garden Center earlier today, they had all their small sizes of mums on sale for $1! So, of course, I bought several, four to be exact!

I decided to use chrysanthemums since they were on sale and look great when combined with different colored ones. If you want to grow different types of flowers together, make sure they make good container companions. Again, do some research before purchasing different types of flowers.

What You Need

These are a few items you will need to make outdoor flower container arrangements.

• container
• flowers (2 or more kinds)
• soil
• watering can
• gardening gloves
• trowel
• drill (if container needs holes)

If you are a beginner gardener, you should be fine with only a container, flowers and soil. You can always purchase the rest later. I bought my supplies gradually and tried to purchase them on sale or at a bargain store.

Steps

Get your chosen container ready for your flowers. Make sure there are holes at the bottom for water to drain through. Drill some holes at the bottom if there are none.

If holes aren’t placed on the bottom of the container, water may sit at the bottom and cause roots to rot, killing your flowers you worked so hard to arrange and take care of. Most containers have holes stenciled at the bottom that can be drilled through.

Fill your container about one third with soil. I use Miracle-Gro Potting Mix for most of my plants. If you decide to use succulents, tropical plants, or other specific plants, buy soil specific to those plants since they will grow best in that soil. You will also want to buy some fertilizer later, such as Miracle-Gro’s All Purpose Plant Food.

Design your container with your flowers by placing the flowers where you want them before you take them out of the containers they came in. I’m a visual person and like seeing the end result as close as possible. Placing the flowers on top of the soil will give you a chance to try different positions and designs before planting your flowers.

Next, plant your flowers. I had other plants in my container previously, so I just dug out some of the soil, then placed my flowers in the container. Gently pull out your flowers from the container they came in. Don’t forget to gently pull on the roots at the bottom to let the plant know it can expand in its new home.

Once the flowers are arranged in the container the way you want them to look, add more soil, around and up to where you planted your flowers. You may want to add more soil in another day or so since it sometimes settles down.

Fill your watering can or hose and water the flowers in their new home. Now you can sit back and enjoy the flower arrangement you just made in your container!

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed creating your own outdoor flower pot arrangements. Since making my chrysanthemum arrangement, I have added other flowers to containers that I already have flowers in, but with enough space to add more.

Let me know how your outdoor flower pot arrangements turned out, or if you have extra steps that you added while you made your own arrangement below.

Happy decorating and happy gardening!