DIY planters from scrap materials

To save money and reduce our footprint, we recycled existing materials into planters. The instructions below outline our approach, but search your own community for materials that could be useful for this project.

LET PEOPLE EXPERIMENT. As long as you have tools to cut and connect various materials, people will find creative ways to create vessels.

ALLOW FOR DRAINAGE. We drilled holes in the bottoms of the plastic buckets we were reusing as planters. In another design, students developed a cone with the outdoor fabric, which
required some testing to determine how many layers allowed the right amount of drainage.

WORK WITH FARMERS. As people experiment with different
designs, have a farm or garden expert on hand to give feedback on space, drainage, depth and other concerns.

TEST YOUR DESIGNS. Students created vessels out of chicken wire and outdoor fabric where the wire held the shape on the exterior, while the fabric held the dirt on the interior. Concerns were making something big yet light enough to carry, and making sure snipped chicken wire didn’t poke out and cause injury.