The idea of the hanging Garden is one that’s been with us for centuries. Probably the most famous use of hanging outdoor plant stands would be in Babylonia. We’ve all heard of the incredible hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the world.
Nowadays, we can also enjoy a hanging garden, albeit on a much smaller scale. I personally have a few friends that do their vegetable gardening using hanging plant stands. Typically, what they’ve got is a large T-shaped structure, like one end of an old clothesline. If there are dear in the area, this can be very tall indeed – up to 15 feet. Usually what they’ll do is put the tomatoes and herbs, or other rabbit and deer tempting plants in a series of buckets. They run a line from the bucket handle up to a small pulley. The pulleys are fixed onto the bottom of the horizontal part of the T., about 16 inches apart.
A rope of course goes from the bucket handle up through the pulley and that is tied off on the vertical T. Not only do the cords coming in from the outside edges of the T. offer an additional opportunity for decoration, as you can use different colors or types of cords for different plants, but they offer a way to raise and lower the potted plants or vegetables.
Time to water with tomatoes — no problem. All you have to do is unhook the far end of the rope and lower the bucket. When you’re done pull it back up, tie it off, and the deer don’t have a chance.
In addition to this redneck version of the hanging gardens, there are a lot of other way more fashionable ways to do this now. Today hanging gardens are primarily created by using moss lined wire baskets. You can make your own moss wire baskets by soaking Pete Moss of warm water, squeezing out most of the moisture and impressing the boss against the inside framework of the basket was the mosses dry. It makes a perfect part for holding soil and plants.
You can also go to garden centers and get play or plastic pots with either a support saucer that the pot sits on and it has pre-drilled holes for attaching hangers, or with a layup that has pre-drilled holes so that you can attach your hanging rope or wire directly to top edge of the pot. The damage to using the saucer type of hanging pot of course, is that you can switch the pops out when it whatever you like and leave the saucers in place.
You can also get metal clips that can be used to hang smaller clay pots on a wall or fence, or from another structure that will enable them to be suspended from the ceiling poker pulley, much like our tomato hanger described above. This enables you to make most any structures with a little height into outdoor plant hangers.
Nowadays, you have endless opportunities to make your own hanging vegetable garden or flower garden. With a little ingenuity and some help from your local garden center. It shouldn’t take more than a single Saturday to add this beautiful and useful structure to your garden or patio.
