I was watching one of those home improvements shows and they used a bunch of planters to create an accent wall. We had a dead space in our back hallway that has never really been interesting but is one of the few places in the house that gets good light. After some searching around the internet and considering what materials we had on hand vs the space we created an accent piece using wood and plants. I’m really pleased with the outcome and hope it will grow into something green and lush. The whole project was completed over two days.
We had some pieces of cypress from the local sawmill left over from another project. They have been collecting dust in the garage.
We picked three pieces that already had shapes that roughly go together and had cut left and right sides. Sanded them down and gave them three coats of lacquer to bring out the grain and live edges. After finishing I was please to see the variety of color and grain they had.
This was the space. It has full length french doors that we never use so essentially big windows that face east and get a good amount of morning sun. I added these curtains several years ago because it tended to get too hot back here. There is also a door on the left that swings into the wall so only the right portion was available. We used picture hanging cleats and wall anchors where we couldn’t hit studs to hold the pieces of wood since there would be quite a bit of weight on them. The cleats allowed us to minimize holes in the wall and the wood and made it easier to adjust their position. They are also easily removable if necessary.
After much internet searching I decided to use these pots. They are 7” pots so a decent volume to allow the plants to grow. They have a keyhole so they can be easily rearranged if certain plants need more light or grow bigger than others. They also have a flat back to help support the weight. The black inner pot is shorter than the white outer pot and has a cord that hangs down into the water reservoir in the bottom of the white pot so the plants can regulate their water use and do not need constant watering. The inner/outer pot system also made it easy to mount all the white pots and then just set the planted inner pots inside once I had decided on the position of the outer pots on the wood.
This was the arrangement before the inner pots went in. Because the wood is mounted on the cleats I could take them down and lay them flat, figure out the arrangement, mark the position and add screws very easily. Put the pots on the screws and then put the wood back on the wall. I bought 14 pots (they came in packs of 7) but only ended up using 12. The extras went outside on the fence (I also bought too many plants so it worked out). I tried to stagger them as much as possible so the plants would have room to grow.
Here is the result after plants were added. I used mostly succulents but also some ivy, a croton and what I think is a purple waffle plant I had split from a larger plant. Some of these are hanging plants and depending on how they all grow I will probably rearrange this later. I have plenty of backups if some of these don’t like it here. This was the light around 5 pm.
A few days later with the light around mid morning. Plants are looking happy so far.