Tower of Flowers

When you're renting, sometimes it is hard to make a space feel like it's really "yours" - it seems silly to put a lot of money or effort into a place that you most likely will leave after just one year. But after 3 months, it seemed like we needed something to make it feel a little bit more like home. One of our favorite features about our location is the great view. Our apartment patio backs up to a small nature preserve and a running trail.

View from our patio.

The only thing on our patio is a barbeque, so I thought it was time to liven it up a bit. My Girls Team partner found a really cute idea for stacked potted plants on Pinterest, and we planned to make it happen in my yard. (Sidenote: we made it happen on one of the hottest days of the year. Seriously. It was 102 degrees at 7 p.m. when we started this outdoor project. Yikes!)

My mom came over with her gardening tools and soil.

I purchased the materials over the weekend. Flowers from Green Acres ($13), 60" rebar from Home Depot ($4.20) and 5 - 6" terracotta pots and 1 - 8" terracotta pot from Michael's ($12.50).

First we hammered the rebar one foot into the ground. And by "we" I mean my really strong, muscular roommate who was forced to help :)

The plan was to stack the pots on top of each other, so we began stringing the pots onto the rebar, and filling them with soil, one pot at a time. As we stacked them, we realized I didn't buy enough so we took a quick trip to Michael's and bought two more 6" pots and one more 8" pot.

By the time we got back, it was dark so we just stopped taking pictures because as the one above shows, they weren't turning out very well. Basically, we just kept stacking and tilting the pots until we reached the top of the rebar, starting and ending with the 8" pots. Once all of the pots were filled with soil, we planted the petunias. Night gardening is really creepy when there is a deafening sound of crickets surrounding you! When my mom left, we both liked what we could see of the final product in the dark but were excited to see it in the daylight...

This morning I woke up to this adorable creation and immediately texted a picture to my Girls Team partner.

Up close view :)

Had we not needed to make an emergency Michael's trip, we could have finished this project in about one hour. Once the rebar was in the ground, it was simple gardening. I was a little skeptical before we built this because the Pinterest example had painted the pots blue and it looked cheap. I'm glad we kept this simple and natual looking, and as any Pinterest user knows, it's always nice when your project turns out looking BETTER than the professionally made and photographed sample you copied :)

 

I couldn't be happier with how this turned out! This tower of flowers adds pops of color to our view without obstructing it and makes our patio look like someone actually lives there. The Girls Team loved this project and would rank it in our top 5 for cutest crafts we've tried so far!