How to create a wall of plants

We recently decorated our hallway, stairway and landing – finally ridding the house of its last areas of beige and magnolia, and painting everything a fresh, bright white. Obviously this meant taking everything down off the walls, and I’ve taken my time deciding what to fill that great, white expanse of wall on the stairway. I wanted to try to introduce some plants there if I could, but I couldn’t work out quite how to go about doing it. Then I went along to B&Q’s recent press show, and saw some clever wall hooks made using plywood – we were even given a tutorial sheet to take home. We all know what a fan I am of using plywood in interiors, and an idea started to take shape.

B&Q had also sent me a handy tutorial for a hanging planter when I worked on my Spring Summer styling post, but I hadn’t had the chance to try making one. I decided that I’d use both ideas at once, and make a set of hanging planters to hang from plywood hooks arranged across the stairway wall. While Ben was tasked with constructing the hooks, I started on the macramé hangers. I made one using cotton cord but quickly realised I wouldn’t have nearly enough cord, so I switched to garden twine, and I actually really love the rustic element that the twine adds to the display.

 

Ben knocked up the hooks for me using 18mm plywood, wooden dowel rod (20mm) and dowel screws. The tutorial from B&Q had the plywood shape screwed onto the dowel, but we cheated and used wood glue (to avoid having to fill screw holes on the front). I went for an odd number of hooks and planters (a stylist’s trick to pull an arrangement together) – five seemed the perfect number to fill the space without the display feeling too crowded and busy. I chose some trailing plants – ivy and tradescantia – as well as a couple of spider plants, and the pots and plants all came from my local B&Q store.

Instructions for the hanging planter (adapted from the B&Q tutorial):

1. Measure 8 lengths of string (mine measured 1m long), and tie them all together in a knot at one end.
2. Separate them into pairs, and knot each pair together, around 7cm from the big knot at the end.
3. Once all four pairs have been knotted together, knot one string from one pair with a string from the adjacent pair (I left about 8cm from the last knot), to create a zigzag effect. I repeated this twice, creating what looks almost like a fishing net.
4. Sit the plant pot onto the big knot at the bottom, bring up all the lengths of string around the pot and tie in a knot at the very top, which can loop over the hook.

 

Instructions for the hooks (adapted from the B&Q tutorial):

1. Mark out your shape onto the plywood (we made circles, triangles and squares, but you could try any shape), clamp it and cut out with a saw.
2. Work out how deep you want your hook, mark the dowel and saw the required length.
3. Drill a pilot hole in the centre of the dowel and fasten the dowel screw.
4. Apply wood glue to the other end of the dowel and fix to the centre of the plywood shape.

There’s a video tutorial of this project up on my YouTube channel, Heather’s Space, click here to watch, or even better, subscribe to my channel and then you can be sure you won’t miss any of my videos!

I’m going to link this post up to this month’s Create Make Share linky, as I think it’s a perfect fit for the theme of ‘Bloom’. Have you got a creative project or makeover that you’d like to share? Please do head on over, and add your link too.

Disclosure: B&Q supplied the products used in this post free of charge