Don't throw it away! Ideas for Upcycling Old Furniture on Your Porch Garden - All About Recycling for Your Container Garden

Ikea table turned outdoor dining table with potted plants and herbals for pretty urban container garden

A Night Time Tour of the Porch Container Garden Featuring Recycled/Upcycled Furniture, Faerie Garden Tchotchke, Herbs, Perennials, and Annuals


Here's a little Ikea table, left behind by my old roommate and good friend Rene. It's not an outdoor table per se, but with the table cloth (Dollar Tree) over it it works just fine. That was a tasty Grapefruit Shandy in that Sam Adams glass, which I enjoyed while watching the Patriots preseason through the screen window into my bedroom and planted the new herbals into their containers.

Potted Grandpa Ott's Morning Glories in Topiary
Potted Grandpa Ott's Morning Glories in Topiary

How to Plant the Opportunistic Morning Glory Vines in a Container Garden

In a pot small enough to fit a topiary on top, I gently pull any sprouting morning glories from the other containers and stick them in the little pot. The morning glory vines grow up the topiary. This a topiary from my mother's garden back in Weymouth. I love butterflies so she gave it to me. 

Grandpa Ott's Morning Glory Flower about to Bloom
Grandpa Ott's Morning Glory Flower about to Bloom

I got the seeds from a visit to the New York Botanical Garden in 2010. The seeds have replanted themselves from along my old fence in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston to the containers at the (newer) apartment in the Roslindale neighborbood! [Edit from 2018, they made it down to Providence, too!]

Watering Can Storage and Potted Red Salvia Annual in Urban Container Garden
Watering Can Storage and Potted Red Salvia Annual in Urban Container Garden

Watering an Urban Porch Garden - Fill Up Multiple Watering Cans


Those pots are from a garden store. The watering cans are from other roommates. The storage blocks were leftover from the bigger one on the other side of the porch. That was one red salvia plant, split in two for each pot.

Here I'm using the height of a gridded storage containers for getting as much as possible into the small space I have. Then I added color with colorful containers in lime green and turquoise, and, of course, the pretty red annual salvia. It is neat, tidy, functional and cute storage.