DIY Planter Box Ideas To Welcome Spring And Summer With

Potted plants, whether big or small, bring us closer to nature and add color to our homes. Outdoor plants are no different. If anything, they surround us with freshness and vibrant beauty. A DIY planter box can potentially increase their charm even more. As always, we’ve prepared to offer you a bunch of ideas regarding the design and building process so you can choose the ones you like best for future customization. Without further ado, here are our favorite DIY planter box projects gathered over the years.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

We’re going to start with a minimal concrete planter box just because it’s so incredibly easy to put together. A while ago we posted a detailed tutorial showing how to build one of these. The planter is made of only four concrete pavers which means there’s no bottom paver and the water goes right into the soil under the planter. Be sure to place it accordingly. Use landscape adhesive and concrete sealer to ensure the structural integrity of the planter and to give it a uniform and minimalist look.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

Next up, a pallet planter. If you’re already an enthusiast of DIY projects and crafts, you might have worked with wooden pallets before and perhaps you have some leftover planks somewhere waiting to be put to good use. Now is your chance. First you need to build a frame for your pallet planter and then to cover it up with pallet boards. Add the bottom, make a trim around the interior and attach the angled legs. After that, paint the planter box. Check out our video tutorial to find out a few tips regarding this project.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

Window box planters are very cool because they let you enjoy the sweet smell of the flowers whenever you open the window plus they also look great from the outside. Building one from scratch is pretty easy too. You need three cedar boards (other types can work too) as long as your window and two smaller ones (their length should match the width of the other 3 boards). Secure the boards with decking screws. If you want you can stain, paint or seal your window box planter.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

If you have a deck or a covered terrace you might also want to consider a DIY hanging planter. Once again, you can use leftover pallet boards if you have any. If you cut the boards exactly in two you can make a medium-sized planter box. Two pallet pieces per side should be enough. You can secure the top and bottom of the planter with extra pieces of wood just to be sure it holds. When the box is done, paint it and then hang it with metal chain and screw-in hooks.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

We love projects that involve recycled wood. These crafts usually have a lot of character and are always unique and special in some way. A planter box is one of the many things you can make out of leftover pieces of wood from previous projects or from boards salvaged from old fences or barns. Isn’t this chevron planter box charming? Yes, it’s made of recycled wood and you can make it as big as you want as long as you have enough material. Find out all about it on stuffsethmakes.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

Since you’re building the planter box yourself from scratch, you can give it any dimensions you want. Perhaps you could make one that perfectly fits in the corner of your balcony or one that can look nice in your entryway or out on the deck. The design doesn’t have to be complicated. Keep it simple and practical and let the plants be the center of attention. If you like this cedar planter box, check out the tutorial for it on instructables.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

Another cool idea is to build a planter box with multiple sections or to combine several individual planter modules into a larger unit. The inspiration here comes from instructables where we found another interesting project, this time involving rustic fence boards and a symmetrical form that looks like a plus sign (or an x or a cross). The most difficult and time-consuming part is making all the cuts. You have to be precise or otherwise the planter won’t be symmetrical or the pieces won’t fit together.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

This hexagon-shaped planter is pretty awesome too. As you can see, it’s pretty big and it’s divided into seven smaller compartments. On homedepot you can find a very detailed tutorial explaining all the steps and measurements. Once you get down to it, it’s really not that complicated. With attention to detail and patience you can build your own hexagon planter and you can fill it with beautiful fresh herbs or flowering plants.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

If you have enough materials you could make not one but two planter boxes and you could stack them to save space. This idea comes from jenwoodhouse where we found this stylish chevron two-tiered vertical planter tutorial. The project starts with the frame. Once you’ve built that, you can start attaching all the individual boards which you’ve previously cut to size. The chevron pattern is a nice touch, although cutting all the pieces is quite tedious.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

While it’s definitely easy to repurpose a barrel or a bucket into a planter, aesthetically the transformation is not that great unless, of course, you surround the planter with a sort of mask. If you’re interested in how to achieve all that, check out this step-by-step tutorial from instructables. It teaches you how to cut a barrel and how to turn it into a planter and then how to build a wooden cover for it.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

If you have a fence or a deck or terrace with guardrails, you could decorate them with flower boxes and you could make those out of pallet boards. These boxes could also be hanged outside the window with minimal interventions to the design and structure. On simplifythechaos you can find more details regarding this projects, with instructions on how to plan everything, start to finish.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

Planter boxes can also be displayed in tiers, as suggested on mcfarlanddesign. What we like about this idea is that the planters can be hanged in a variety of different settings and also in various manners. One option is to display them in groups along an exterior wall  but you could also put these boxes indoors where you could grow succulents or herbs without wasting any space on the floor or on the counter.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

Interested in growing a salad garden in your balcony? That’s entirely possible and the first thing you need to do is build a planter. We using this DIY cedar planter box which was featured on ehow. It’s sturdy, durable, not to mention good-looking and it has the right size. Don’t you just love its simplicity and that elegant contrast between the black legs and edges and the rest of the box?

Concrete Planter Box DIY

There are obviously a lot of interesting and good-looking planter box designs worthy of being mentioned here today and it’s a shame we can’t show you all of them but we can select our favorites and these criss-cross planters from centsationalstyle are among them. Building something like this is pretty easy. You basically just put together a cube-shaped frame and then you cover the sides and the bottom with wood boards cut to the right size. After that, all that’s left to do is add the decorative details to get that criss-cross pattern.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

Want something special that’s as much a wall decoration as it is a planter? Check out this monogram planter box featured on ellerydesigns. Of course, if you decide to go with a different letter, one that’s not “k” then this entire tutorial will be pretty much useless to you and you’ll have to come up with your own detailed plan for the project.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

Cascading flowers are not exactly the type that thrives in the kind of planters that we showed you so far. They need room to hang and to showcase their beauty and for that to happen you need to build a special kind of planter box. Don’t worry, it’s not nothing too complicated. Basically you can just make a regular planter box and just cut a bunch of holes on its sides so the plants can grow through them. This ingenious idea comes from hertoolbelt.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

Tall planters like the one we found on bowerpowerblog form another special category. Building a tall planter box is not more difficult than building a regular, low planter…there are just a few design differences. Keep in mind that you also need a pot to put inside this box so perhaps it would be practical to first select the pot and then to design the planter box around it.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

Here’s another tall planter box, this time with a rectangular form. Apart from all the wood boards, to build such a planter you’ll need glue, a nail gun, a drill, wood stain, waterproof sealant, and some rope for those decorative details on the front. You can find out all about this project on cherishedbliss.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

This cute and quirky planter box featured on biggerthanthethreeofus is pretty special as it also functions as a side or accent table. Moreover, it incorporates three small plant slots that are perfect for succulents, cacti and small plants in general. The form also allows this planter box to be ideal for corner spaces.

Concrete Planter Box DIY

The last design we want to show you today is a hybrid between a planter box and a bench. The project comes from brittanystager and is easier than you think. The design is simple and elegant and one of the planter is a bit taller than the bench which is a really nice touch, allowing the rim to serve as an armrest as well as a small side table.