6 DIY Planter Ideas

Local tastemakers and media personalities upcycle everything from chandeliers to dressers to make beautiful garden planters.

The scads of Pinterest boards on the subject do not lie—people love turning household objects into funky planters.Over the weekend, crowds flocked to Vancouver’s BC Place and found everyday sinks, bricks, chandeliers and dressers had been reimagined as potted creations for flowers and succulents in the latest BC Home + Garden Show Ultimate Upcycle Challenge: Planted.A group of bloggers, tastemakers and local media (including yours truly!) were enlisted to turn pre-loved items from Vancouver ReStore into beautiful home planters for the competition.Each piece was then auctioned off for charity—all proceeds went to Habitat for Humanity Greater Vancouver—but here are some of our favourite picks to inspire a creative planter project of your own: Get Stacked. With the help of antique-looking drawer pulls and shades of blue paint, interior designer Kendall Ansell transformed plain white dresser drawers into this asymmetrically stacked planter that would be at home inside or outside.Garden Bling. Shaw TV’s Dunia Tozy shows how easy it is to add a little glam to outdoor spaces with this upcycled lighting fixture.Bric-a-Brac. For this project I rummaged through piles of bricks out front of the Vancouver ReStore to find the perfect set of three. After blocking up the bottom of the holes with clay, I hit the bricks with high gloss white spray paint and then a base-line dusting of Rustoleum’s Ocean Mist (the perfect minty aquamarine!) for an ombre effect.The Wild Card. When I saw the ’90s side table and basin blogger Jennifer Pistor grabbed, I wasn’t quite sure what her plan was, but she turned these seemingly incongruous pieces into a beautiful standing planter that’s so funky West Coast (it even sparked a bidding war at the show!).Gardener’s Delight. The Westender‘s Kelsey Klassen gave a tired old chandelier new life with this big beautiful terrarium-like makeover.Sweet Stuff. Hats off to Frugal Living Adventures‘ Tijana Popovic for coming up with this delicate planter. We love how she replaced lampshades with mini pots and repainted the chandelier in a dainty sweet pea palette.