This giant fall porch planter cost me less than $15 to put together! Here’s how to make this inexpensive oversized fall porch planter.
I didn’t really have any intentions with trying to keep my porch decor spending under control this fall, but when it comes to fall decor, the simple, easy-to-get things are just the very best. A few little mums and some interesting pumpkins grown by local farmers are always exactly right, and really all you need for a really lovely, welcoming front porch.
After bringing home a bunch of fall goodies, with no plans for exactly what I was going to do with them, I had a little moment of front porch inspiration when I saw this giant planter that I’ve had forever sitting next to the garage. I just kind of started playing around and this is what I came up with! After putting it in place, I realized how inexpensive this whole thing was to put together and how charming it was, and I thought I’d better share the idea so other people can create a planter like this too. 🙂
Materials Needed for the Inexpensive Oversized Fall Planter
Buying pre-made planter inserts can be really expensive so filling your planters yourself is a great thing if you can come up with a good idea for what you want to do. For this idea you’ll need:
- A large planter. Mine is an all-weather planter with a diameter of about 18″
- A smaller mum. This one is in a six-inch pot.
- Baby boo pumpkins. I bought 16 and I ended up using 12 for this.
- Bricks or other fillers like rocks, mulch, empty nursery pots, whatever!
- Black plastic garbage bags. I used three.
How to Assemble the Oversized Fall Planter
Start out by filling the base of the big planter. Mine had been sitting unused for a few years and had some soil still in the bottom third of it. Just use whatever you have. You could definitely just fill the bottom with empty nursery pots. That would make it lighter to move around than my dirt-and-brick combo too. 🙂
Place your mum into the centre of the pot. You want the top lip of the mum’s pot to sit about an inch or two above the top of the large planter. If your mum is too low, just add something else under it to raise it up.
Add in more filler around the mum. This is where my big pile of bricks that lives behind our garage came in handy. Top whatever filler you use with scrunched up black garbage bags. I ended up using three to get my filler up to the level that I thought would look right. Black garbage bags are best here because there will be some gaps between your baby pumpkins and the black will kind of disappear into the darkness and be less noticeable than if you used white ones.
Place your pumpkins all around your mum, covering up as much of the black plastic garbage bags as you can. That’s it! You’re done!
Do you try to make your own planter inserts every season or do you like to buy the fancy pre-made ones from the garden centre?
MORE IDEAS LIKE THIS
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- Dairy Free Pumpkin Spice Coffee Creamer
- What to Clean in October
- The Creek Line House Fall Archives
Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.