I really love using herbs when I cook and was getting sick of buying them from the supermarket every week only to find they had gone bad when I wanted to use them.
I had been thinking about planting my own herb garden for a while but since we don't really have much garden space and we also rent, I wanted a garden that I could take with me if we move house. So I decided I needed to use pots… but then the question was which pots to use.
I had seen hanging gardens on a couple of home renovation shows and thought that they looked really cool and also got the pots off the deck, which was another bonus. The only problem was the price. I found the metal pot hangers at one shop but they were super expensive and only came in rows of three. So I jumped online, did a google search and came across a website that sells the individual hangers for about $8 each (depending on what size you buy). I ordered these straight away and they arrived in about 3 days (great service by the way).
Once I had my hangers sorted I decided to use terracotta pots, not only for the look but also as they would hold in some moisture after watering. I decided plain old terracotta pots were a bit boring so to brighten them up I painted the top of the pots in bright colours. I bought a couple of tester pots from the paint shop and used a mini paint roller to apply… two coats was all it took.
The thing to remember when painting these pots is that you need to use a primer/undercoat first because the pots are so porous that the paint will just soak in if you don't. Also, you need to make sure you let each coat of paint dry properly before you apply the next.
Once I had these all painted up, I decided to hand paint the name of the herb onto each pot. To do this, I went onto my computer and typed out the name of each herb. I then chose a font I liked and resized the text to the size I wanted. I then printed these out and used a pencil to draw the letters onto the pots using the printed words as a guide. Once done I just hand painted the words with a small paint brush and some black paint.
Another idea would be to paint the top of the pots with blackboard paint then you can use chalk to write the name of the herb and can change it whenever you need to. Or you could paint a design on the pots, or really, whatever you want… You are only limited by your imagination.