Front Porch Eye Candy

I've been looking for flower pots for our front porch for a couple years now.  The thing about getting these flower pots, was I didn't want to spend a fortune.  It seemed like anywhere I looked, the size I needed was at least $100, sometimes more!  Yeah, I don't think so!  Well, I was in Jo-Ann's looking for some durable fabric for another project and I saw the perfect flower pots!  Regularly $59.99 but they had them 50% off.  I still didn't bring them to the register because I just really wanted a better deal.  (I'm sounding so cheap right now)... Well, I asked the wonderful woman at the register when they'd be sending out coupons for discounts off of an entire purchase to include sale and clearance.  She, of course, didn't know, but she told me to text 56266 (Joann) and type in CREATE for the message.  Immediately that sent me a coupon for 20% off my entire purchase!  She then typed in the special code and I was able to save a little extra!  If you plan to do this, be sure you're making a trip to Jo-Ann's soon because the code expired after just a couple days.

So anyway!!  Here are my flower pots and how I filled 'em up!

Since the pots are HUGE, I didn't want to be wasting money on a bunch of potting soil.  Instead, I made sure the drainage hole in the bottom was free of any debris, built up large rocks around the hole, then put some cheap plastic plant containers that I snagged from my parent's house into the bottom of the pot.  Once I did that, I put in a little less than half a bag of gravel that was around $2.

Once I had all the filler in place, I filled the pots the rest of the way with potting soil and put my plants in!

As a rule of thumb, you always want to try to have a thriller, spiller, & filler with your potted plants.

Thriller: Red Fountain Grass, Filler: Wave Petunias, Spiller: Ivy

I'm excited to see how these will fill out over the course of the summer (if I don't end up killing them!). I'm amazed at how this camera angle makes those pots appear to be so much smaller than I think they actually look in person!  I guess they're not much of a statement from the road but I sure do enjoy them while sitting outside.

Any tips or tricks to keeping potted plants beautiful?

Janice