Are you itching to get gardening but also a tad concerned about where you’re going to put any new plants? Part of the fun of having a garden–any garden–is adding to your collection. What do you do if your gardening space is already filled to the brim? If the only gardening direction you can go in now is up, I’ve got some fun ideas discovered from snooping in gardens large and small and I’m not just talking about hanging baskets.

Reinventing the hanging basket

Small barrel pots are suspended from an oxen yoke in a Toronto garden.

Ok, this first idea (seen above) does technically involve hanging baskets or, rather, pots. But I love how this gardener added extra drama by turning a pair of planters into an eye-catching balancing act.

Adding a trellis

An airy trellis is used to display old rubber boots filled with plants in a garden north of Toronto.

Clearly this garden, seen above, has plenty of room for adding all manner of plants but that didn’t stop the gardener from fulfilling an urge to go up rather than out. The trellis is light and airy. Providing privacy or demarcating a border is not on the agenda here. The fact that it’s simply there as aerial support makes the choice of ‘pots’–old rubber boots–all the more oddly satisfying.

Finding/making a tall, sculptural pot ‘stand’

A multiple pot holder shaped like a tall, weaving plant in a Toronto garden.

Tall, elegant metal pot stands have been around since Victorian times. I love this design (seen above) with its undulating branches accommodating several pots. If you want something like this for your garden and can’t find anything like it at your local garden supply store, try the old Tipsy Pots rebar trick:

• Push a tall, slim metal pole (rebar) into the ground.
• Take a clay pot with a drainage hole at the bottom of it. String the pot onto the pole, bottom first.
• Position the pot on the ground at a tilt (with the pole going up through the middle of it). Fill with soil.
• Take another pot. String it onto the pole and position on top of the first pot, also at a tilt. Fill with soil.
• Continue with pots until you’ve reached desired height of tilted pots, filled with soil, seemingly balanced on their edges.
• Check out Crafty Gardener for easy how-to’s with loads of helpful photos.

Getting your trees involved

Flower pots attached to the trunk of a large tree in a rural garden near Gananoque.

Of course, if you’ve got lots of trees you can always press some of them into multi-tasking as flower pot holders.

Transforming a roof

A flowering garden blooms from the roof of a garage in urban Toronto.

A green roof can be breath-taking but also involve a breath-catching budget. Adequate load-bearing support for the extra weight of plants and soil plus watering and drainage solutions can make for a pretty pricey garden. But if you can swing it, why not reach for the sky?