The Best Mixed Planters for a Patio

Umbrella Stand Planter

• Position a large garden urn where you want it--once filled, it will be heavy--and fill the bottom of the urn with large garden gravel or stones. Stick a hollow length of PVC pipe in the center of the stones and keep it upright as you pack a few inches of cement on top of the stones. While the cement is wet, stick four or five wooden dowels in it and wiggle them around so you create drainage holes. Remove the dowels before the cement hardens, fill the top of the urn with potting soil, plant an English garden of mixed flowers in the soil, and slide the patio umbrella pole into the PVC pipe. Now you have summer-in-a-pot on the patio.

The Complete Kitchen Garden

• Repurpose an old wooden chest into a treasure chest that will supply the cook all summer. If the chest is deep, line the bottom with overturned plastic milk crates. If the chest is shallow, line it with old baking racks. Set the chest on four flat bricks to keep it slightly off the ground. Crowd every kind of container into the chest: mismatched terra cotta and glazed pots, coffee cans, gallon ice cream containers, plastic-lined woven baskets, chipped enamel basins. Plant lettuces, herbs, Gerbera daisies, fiddleheads, baby carrots, radishes, a staked cherry tomato plant--whatever you have room for. Keep it well-watered; herbs in containers dry out much faster than herbs growing in a garden. When it's time to make a salad, select from your bounty and clip a few flowers for the table too.

Simple Symmetry

• Line up a row of cut-down wooden barrels, old galvanized tubs, large glazed patio pots or cast-off children's wagons--each painted a different primary color--along the edge of your patio. Use just one type of container and fill each with the same green, flowering plants: a tall plant in the center of each, mid-size plants around it, and trailing plants around the edge of the container. Keep everything identical for a tableau or change one thing in each container. In one, for example, mix strawberry plants with the mid-size flowers. In another, plant chocolate mint in the center. Tuck a few basil seedlings in a third. Alternate pansies with trailing flowers in a fourth. If the flowers get leggy or stop blooming as the season wears on, replant, keeping the same patterns throughout the planters. The effect is a high-impact, low-maintenance style that's formal and friendly at the same time.