Are you a frustrated designer, do you have an eye for colour and fashion.

Making a planter or hanging basket, allows you to develop your designing skills, on a small scale. You can move plants around to find the best combinations, play with textures and change colours.
A planter will allow you to test colour combinations and shapes, unlike home furnishings or paint, plants change shape and colour as they grow, the possibilities are limitless.

Choosing plants for your planter

Plants grow in different ways and although very accommodating, if you put them in the wrong place, they will try to revert to their normal habit.
A trailing plant will always want to trail for instance.
To make a mixed planter using different types of plants can look complicated, so to help you decide I have split them into 3 groups using a clock to describe the habit

For a mixed planter choose a tall plant for height, some semi-trailing for filling and if the planter is high enough use some trailing plants to hang down.
This is often described as Thrillers (tall) Fillers (semi-trailing) and Spillers (trailing) an American concept designed to help with choosing plants for containers.

So there are three main elements in planting, we combine them to create your planter

Planter elements

Using a tall or colourful plant in the centre will create a focal point, it will draw your eye into the planter

Symmetrical

You can make your planter symmetrical, your eyes are drawn to the focal point and then evenly to the edges of the planter

Asymmetrical

Making your planter asymmetrical creates more movement, from the focal point to the filler and down to the spiller

Single planting

After all that planning and using structural elements, I should just mention single planting. It is possible to make a planter out of just one type of plant, they can look very effective. The secret is to use enough plants to create a bit of crowding this will force the middle up to create height and around the edges to improve the trailing effect. You can make a good basket out of any of the semi-trailing habit plants.

When you have chosen the structure plants, it is time to think about colours, for our new gardener I think a simple hot or cool mix is probably the easiest.

Using a designers colour wheel you can choose your plants.

A hot mix creates a vibrant planter combine 2 or 3 colours or use shades of the same colour.

A cool mix creates a cool calming or reflective mood, combine 2 or 3 colours or use shades of the same colour