Make a Hanging Garden

Make a hanging garden of stacked pots! Although it may be blisteringly hot outside, you can now garden underneath the shade of your porch! You can take advantage of vertical space and shady areas using this quick, easy, and simple method of gardening. In the summer, most plant nurseries offer reduced prices for many of their plants (at least in the summer heat of Texas they do). Here's a way to take advantage of those prices and make a space-friendly vertical garden that can be enjoyed anywhere.

Vertical gardening helps utilize space in urban settings, allowing you to have more plants in a smaller space. More plants in cities means cleaner air, so get started right away!

If you don't have a suitable place to hang your garden and/or have high winds that could damage knock them off, you could also choose to use the larger tipsy pot tower that inspired this.

More pictures to come!

Step 1: Gather Your Supplies

The first step everyone should take when starting a project - gather your supplies.

• Small to medium-sized pots
• Potting soil
• Thin galvanized chain (I used a cheap chain fish stringer I had lying around.)
• Something to keep the end of the chain from coming up out of the bottom of the pot (I used a bolt , a nut and a washer)
• Somewhere to hang the garden (a hook, a nail, a sturdy branch)
• Potting soil
• Plants (choose plants that have the right light requirements for the area you are hanging it in. For example, if you are hanging it underneath a shaded porch, choose shade-tolerant plants)

There are a few things to keep in mind when you choose your materials. The chain should be able to fit through the hole in the bottom of your pots. The pots can't be too heavy when they are filled and hanging, or they will potentially break and y'all will have a big ol' mess to clean up! You should also make sure the number of pots you get can fit on the amount of chain you have.

Trailing plants like vines would make a good plant on the bottom pot. Flowers can be used in the middle and upper ones. Keep in mind you dont have to choose just ornamental plants and flowers. You could also choose herbs such as lemon balm, mint, basil, etc. to be enjoyed in salads and teas or even used for medicinal purposes.

Step 2: Prepare the Chain to Hang

Since the pots are going to be stacked on the chain, you need something to keep the chain from sliding through. It needs to be something large enough so that can't slip through the bottom no matter how it is positioned. This is just in case it somehow moves. An easy way to do this is to get a bolt, a nut that fits on the bolt, and a washer that cannot slide off the nut and the large end of the bolt.

How to arrange this

1. Slide the bolt through the bottom link in the chain 

2. Slide the washer on

3. Screw on the bolt

I didn't use use one of the hooks I took off of the fish stringer because I just didn't like the way it looked. 

You can use any other method that works, I just used items that were on hand. You can post your own method in the comments section for other people to try. Or, if you are other people, you could try looking in the comments section for another method if you need one.

Step 3: Hang Those Pots and Fill Em Up Good!

Believe it or not, this is themost difficult step. Hang the pots alternatingly, as shown in the pictures. Be very careful not to let the pots drop into the other pots while you stack them, as they might break. Carefully lift it up onto the hook and fill them up. It's best to find the permanent spot you want the pots to hang in; after they're filled they are heavy and hard to move and hang again. You can choose different sized pots, just make sure that the top is open enough for the plants to grow through. For example, you could hang a small pot on top, a larger pot on bottom, and sizes in between the two in the middle to create a cascading look.

Step 4: Plant Your Garden

When you have your pots hanging and full of dirt, plant your plants. They should face the direction the pot is hanging. it's best if the dirt is horizontal so that not too much will fall out when you water. It's ok if some dirt comes out at first, after the fist few waterings it should stop. I strongly recomend putting mulch in the pots to help keep the soil in. Now all you have to do is sit back and enjoy your new hanging garden!