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The Inspiration This planter was
at a high-end hotel in Monterey, CA. I peaked into it and found
that only the palm was actually planted in the planter. All the
other plants were in their own individual plastic pots (as they come
from the nursery) and spagnum moss was used to fill in the empty spaces.
This way the hotel can change out plants when they stop blooming, no
longer look good or outgrow the planter.
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The Flowering Gift Basket We
received this gift basket and after a couple of weeks, the plants were
already showing the stress of having been crammed together.
Florists care that the giftbaskets look nice when they first arrive, but
most are not long-term investments. Yet, the real plus of getting
plant giftbaskets over cut flowers is presumably their staying power.
I decided to see if I could turn this thoughtful gift into something
more permanent.
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Deconstructing the Gift Basket
When you take apart the gift basket, you'll find that the florist used a
clear thin plastic container as a liner into which they crammed
all the plants, then covered them with spagnum moss, put in the wicker
basket and added a long plastic card holder and a long wooden pick to
which they wired a bow. Now that I know how this was done, I've
saved the raw materials and plan to recreate a gift basket the next time
someone I know is sick. Hopefully, the only difference between
mine and one from the florist will be that I'll use higher quality
ribbon for the bow.
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Repotting the Individual Plants
Carefully pull apart each plant and select a plastic container with
drain holes for each. (I ran out of plastic pots so just took some
large plastic cups and a utiliy knife and cut my own holes). Add soil,
pull apart the roots a bit and add water. (I also like to add a
dose of miracle grow and "oxygen plus" to the water).
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Choosing a permanent planter Think
beyond wicker baskets. Consider something more grand like in my
inspiration photo above. I bought a few large resin footed urns at
a garage sale a year ago and I've put them to great use for outdoor
flowering plants. For example, I found that their diameter matched
that of the "Color Spot" bowls that are common and fairly inexpensive,
so I simply put the bowls in the urns (with bricks to hold up the bottom
of the pot) and it looks like I've planted the whole urn.
Anyway, I decided to use another footed urn for this project. I
lined it with the bottom of a garbage bag and then filled it most of the
way with packing peanuts. The pots were arranged on top of that
and then spagnum moss was used to cover the gaps.
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The Result Now I have a large
beautiful planted urn with a variety of longlasting houseplants and a
blooming plant that I can easily change out when it's done blooming if I
want to. I plan to water them sparsely every week, perhaps
combined with misting, but every 3-4 weeks, I will plan to take out each
pot and water them thoroughly, letting the water drain through while
sitting in a sink or outdoors. Then I'll simply replace them and
rearrange the spagnum moss. By the way, a good source for spagnum
moss is your local home improvement store and the best value is the
biggest bag. For projects like this, you may go through a lot.
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Another Example We actually
received two similar gift baskets, so I did the same thing with the
other one and put it in a large rectangular iron planter (that I got
from a garage sale, of course!). I think I may like this one even
better!
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