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Get the most from your Balcony

With the rise in city and even town living, many of us these days find ourselves living in apartments or homes where the garden is merely the size of a postage stamp. But those of us who love our greenery will always find a way to bring the outdoor inside via our balconies.

 

So what does this involve – this shrunken garden type living? Well, because space is so tight your design and planning have to be meticulous of course to make the most of what’s there. And that’s what we’re going to look at here in this blog post.

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GARDEN PLANTERS WITHOUT PLANTS

So you think garden planters can only be used for plants? Well, think again!  Metal planters in particular can be used in lots of ways to enhance your garden.

For example, galvanized steel planters and stainless steel garden planters from Precious Design make great ponds and water features.  A shiny metal surface will act as a mirror, lighting up small dark spaces, as light glints off both the water and the plant container, and the galvanisation will stop any corrosion.  Make sure you order a garden planter without drainage holes though!

If you really feel a garden planter should have plants, then how about a planted pond?  Use a large planter, and include a few bricks to vary the height inside.  Add a small water-lily such as yellow-flowered Nymphaea x helvola, some vertical plants such as iris or rushes, and some oxygenators to keep the water healthy.  You can even keep a few fish, though you will have to protect the plant container against frost in winter, and you’ll also need to choose one of our stainless steel garden planters, perhaps a stainless steel cube, or line it with pond liner, as the zinc in galvanised steel can be toxic to fish and invertebrates.  Your container pond will need a bit of attention to keep the plants to a reasonable size, but nothing you can’t handle!

Alternatively, if you prefer, you could relax to the gentle sound of splashing water, with the addition of a small solar-powered fountain to your water-filled garden planter, or top it with pebbles, and add a purpose-built small stone water feature with pump, available from most good garden centres.  The tapered garden planters would make wonderful water feature fountains, with light reflecting off the water drops and the faces of the pot.

Or how about a row of small stainless steel garden planters in the shape of cubes, each containing a light, to extend your evenings outdoors? Settle the light into the cube, putting the electricity cable through the drainage holes, and top with pebbles for an attractive finish.  Look for unusual lights that will complement your beautiful garden pots and sit back and enjoy your plant-free plant containers!

And why stop there?  You could use garden planters as stands for modern sculptures, or for beautiful, architectural displays of dried flowers or gold-painted twisted willow, or for anything else you want – the list is endless. Or even have them stand alone so that you can enjoy the elegance and simplicity of the galvanised steel planters themselves: after all, Precious Design really does do metal planters extremely well!

 

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Large Planters for your Office, Building or Showroom

Are you looking for a selection of beautiful garden planters to enhance your office environment or to add a new touch to your hotel reception or your showroom?  Look no further.  Precious Design can supply a range of designs and sizes to suit any space.  You could choose from a single range, perhaps the galvanised steel planters in the shape of a cube, and available in a range of eight different colours?

Select your colour to suit your environment, or mix and match for a happy, vibrant look.

Alternatively, you could select from several different ranges, but match the finish on each pot: for example, you could have polished stainless steel planters in a triangular prism shape, and match with stainless steel planters in the shape of a cube in a range of sizes.

And if none of our off-the-shelf designs is quite what you’re looking for, why not consider our custom design service, to create your own unique range of bespoke metal planters?

Our design team can help you decide what you want, and you can choose size, colour, and virtually any shape.  All your metal planters will be precision-made to agreed requirements.  Contact our design team today by email info@precious-design.co.uk or call us on 0115 961 4200

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Unusual Plants for Unusual Plant Containers

 
What can you grow in garden planters?  It’s not a natural place to grow shrubs, climbers or perennials: they get too dry, they run out of food, you need to feed and water them regularly, and then they grow too big. Surely you can really only grow annuals?  Well, no.  The answer is that you can grow pretty much any plant in plant containers, as long as you choose the right container.
 
It’s important not to use plant pots that are too big or too small: too big, and the soil may go bad; too small, and the plant will get root-bound and not grow well.  So you may need several garden plant pots over the lifetime of the plant, especially if it grows quite big.  And you also need the shape to be right: so that the rootball fits into the pot comfortably, with about the same amount of space all around it.
 
But that’s the joy of using Precious Design metal planters for your plants. There is such a variety of shapes: tall, cubic, square, tapered.  And with
most off-the-shelf designs and shapes available in several sizes, you can choose the right shape for your plant, and know that you will be able to buy new garden planters the same shape when you need them.  And if you get bored of the original colour or finish, just choose a new one for your new pot, perhaps even a custom finish.  Your old pot, in the meantime, will go on to be home to a new plant, and will look great grouped with your new one.
 

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Garden Planters for small spaces

Most of us nowadays have very little space and time for gardening.  We lead busy lives, and often live in small city flats.  Our outside space is a small courtyard, or perhaps a balcony, and we don’t have the time to tend lots and lots of plant pots.  But we still want that outside space to be fabulous, and we all want something that will impress our visitors!  So what can Precious Design offer?

Precious Design has a great range of ready-made metal planters in some amazing designs.  Some of my favourites for a balcony or similar space are the wide tapered planters– beautiful modern-looking which come in a selection of colours.

But if none of those suit, you could use our custom design service to create one or more unique, bespoke garden planters.  Our team can design and make you beautiful plant containers that will be absolutely unique, and give you a perfect talking point.  You can choose the design and the material, and each one will be made to order, and precision cut.

And then you can choose a plant  or plants to fill your new garden planters: perhaps a fabulous architectural Cordyline to emphasise the height, or maybe some colourful sweet peas to drape over the edges of the pot and fill your balcony with their beautiful scent?  The choice is yours…

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Group your Garden Planters for maximum effect

How do some people manage to get their garden planters and garden plant pots to look so much more fabulous than yours even though they’re using the same plants? Well, part of the answer is by displaying several large planters together. But you can’t just put five garden planters in the same place and hope for the best. So what should you do to improve your display?

There are a few basic rules:

1) Use odd numbers of planters. For some reason, the human eye prefers groups of odd numbers (this rule works in flower arranging, too). Three or five plant containers together look much better than two or four.

2) Keep it (relatively) simple. Have a ‘hook’ that brings your group of plant containers together as a set – either colour, or style, or shape similarities: a group of galvanised planters in different sizes, for example. Too much variety and you will just have a mass of flower pots, not a group.

3) Use plant containers of varying heights. Precious Design can supply different heights in the same range of beautiful metal planters, or you can mix and match different heights from different ranges. Put the tallest ones at the back, and the smaller ones at the front.

4) Try three colours in the same range, but different sizes. Check out our galvanised steel planters in the shape of a cube – use large, medium and small, choosing colours from the wide range available, with plants to complement the container colours. This will give your display a whole new level of sophistication and elegance.

So what are you waiting for? Visit our shop page to see all our metal planters and go and get inspired!

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