Whether you use these to pay up flaws, ramp up fashion or just delight your senses, there is little that the right planters (filled with the proper plants) can’t do. And unlike intensive projects, such as building a new deck, setting out fresh pots are readily achieved in a weekend. From conventional topiary to modern bullet planters, wall gardens into privacy screens, let these 12 creative ideas motivate you to make your terrace glow.
MB Build & Design
1. Use planters to create privacy. Lush greenery, tall grasses and trailing flowers create a pure privacy screen on this terrace. Try putting large window boxfashion planters atop a low wall to achieve a similar impact.
Alex Amend Photography
2. Create a garden that is formal texture with topiary. Neatly trimmed topiary in identical pots brings the look and texture of a formal garden into a terrace. Pick tall, sleek figurines such as those shown here to get a modern look, or try massive urns if conventional style is exactly what you love.
Bright Green
3. Plant a wall garden. As intricate and beautiful as a work of art, a wall-mounted garden can be the focal point of a terrace. Try your hand at a smaller-scale variant or hire an expert to design something similar to what is shown here.
Tara Bussema – Design and Neat Organization
4. Go mod with bullet figurines. The iconic kind of these planters immediately dresses up a modern terrace. One or two are all you need to make a big impact.
Watch more about bullet figurines
Margie Grace – Grace Design Associates
5. Channel a traditional Italian garden with an urn that is oversized. It is hard to beat the love of a weathered urn brimming with blooming roses and trailing ivy.
Revealed: Iceberg Rose with Glacier Ivy
Integrated
6. Plant a dwelling privacy wall. Long, low planters full of palms offer privacy on a metropolitan patio. Check with your regional garden center to find types that can do well with the mild conditions on your terrace.
Kenneth Philp Landscape Architects
7. Learn how to combine plants in a single pot. It can be tough to know which plants to match — take the guesswork out of it using this useful guide from picture designer Margie Grace.
Avant Garden
8. Take a cue from cafés. Carve out a specified patio area inside a larger yard with extra-large planters around the border. Fill the planters flanking the entrance with trees and complete the look with some strategically placed umbrellas.
Arterra Landscape Architects
9. Accent your seating room using a tabletop cactus garden. Fill out a shallow, round container with one or more types of cactus for a tasteful display. Complement your desert planting with raw wood furniture, smooth stone and chunky carved candlesticks.
SB Garden Layout
10. Bring climbing plants into new heights using a wire trellis. Less anticipated than wood, a metal framed trellis gives the terrace an appealingly rustic look. The custom trellis design shown here is by SB Garden Layout.
Arterra Landscape Architects
11. Delight the senses. Encourage roses, jasmine or a different blossom blossom to scale over a pergola or trellis to get a sensory treat.
Logan’s Hammer Building & Renovation
12. Window boxes — not only for windows. Frame a view in an elevated terrace with a row of window boxes placed along the border.
Inform us What is your favorite way to use planters?