One of my favorite things about living in a house is being able to decorate the front porch for holidays… and Christmas is one of my favorites! Year after year I seem to tweak the overall design, both adding and taking away. However, one feature that remains are my DIY porch planters.
Year #1 I attempted to make these using real greenery. The smell was fabulous, the cost was reasonable, but the hassle was huge. Aside from the obvious of having to go locate the items, withstanding the mess of transporting them back home, dealing with the frustration of pieces breaking off due to the elements (I’m in Wisconsin and crazy winds and heavy snow are a given), there was another huge factor… time.
As any person can relate to during the holidays, especially a mother of young children, time is absolutely invaluable during the holiday season. As a result, I dreaded the concept of having to recreate these pots year after year. It was then that I opted for the idea of DIYing faux porch planters that could be used again and again. The time saver was tremendous and below I share exactly how I made it a reality.
* Affiliate links are included in this post. All this means, is that if you click on one of those links and purchase something, I may receive a small commission. However, you will not pay a penny more- promise!
Securing Necessary Items
I already had huge planter pots from summer and fall plants. If you do as well, then I’d recommend reusing and saving yourself the cost of new ones. You will most likely find that the cost of faux porch planters is more expensive then creating real ones. HOWEVER, and this is a big however, this is only for the first year. After that they will pay for themselves, as you won’t have to continue to shell out additional funds to keep your porch planters alive and well.
Styrofoam
First, you will need floral styrofoam. My go-to location for large pieces like the block ones shown below is Amazon. You can find them here. Smaller blocks are available at your local dollar store or here on Amazon. Based upon the size of your pot, you’ll want to play around with which styrofoam size works best for you.
Greenery
Next up is your greenery. The key is finding stems that look real and authentic. You want the benefits of a faux holiday porch planter without the look of them being faux. I found my thin (non-pinecone) evergreen stems here at a super reasonable price. While they are thin, they give a very authentic feel and lend themselves to positioning for the perfect final look.
My remaining greenery/porch planter decor came from Hobby Lobby. Here I found my evergreen stems with pinecones.
Lastly, I purchased inexpensive (now is the time for the quality to look a bit subpar) garland. This will be used as filler in the pot.
Additional Decor
The additional decor is very much style specific. I opted to shop once more at Hobby Lobby for white tall sticks, my gold ornament stems, and my gold bow. With the hopes to match an existing front door wreath I had previously purchased, I stuck with a very specific color scheme. Lastly, I purchased a small strand of lights to illuminate when looking from afar.
Tutorial
Up next came the construction of the porch planters themselves. I opted to create mine indoors given the extremely low temperatures outdoors. If you find yourself in the midwest as well, and creating your porch planters indoors, I’d highly recommend placing a rug underneath because although the items are faux, shedding most definitely still occurs.
- Get your styrofoam to an appropriate height. In order to save myself additional cost for styrofoam, I opted to add bricks to the bottom of my pot planter to achieve height.
- Start with your larger evergreen stems. In my case this was with the pinecones. Create a criss-cross pattern so that the stems take up a larger space within the porch planter itself. Secure the stems within the styrofoam or around it as shown below.
- Fill in the empty space with the smaller evergreen pieces. If your porch planter like mine is rather large, then you’ll want to place the majority of your emphasis on the front of the porch planter.
- Next you will take your tall white sticks and add them to the back of your styrofoam for height behind the greenery.
- Now take your inexpensive garland and weave it between the white sticks and evergreen stems with heavy focus on the back of the porch planter. This will cover the styrofoam in its entirety and fill in the entire planter nicely. It will also serve the purpose of holding the sticks in place due to heavy winds outside.
- The customization time has arrived. Here you can add in your ornaments, decorative pieces, bows, etc. I also opted to string lights throughout. And you are done!
Adding to Your Porch Planters
That’s it, truly so simple! Since the time of taking these original photos last year (as I mentioned above, time is a bit of a factor and posts get delayed… 365 day at that ;)), I opted to add additional large sticks to my pots. They now include large birch logs and sticks for height. You can find them here.
That is precisely the benefit of these DIY porch planters for the holidays. Each and every year you can simply add to them or take away. There is no right or wrong way to decorate with them, they can simply change as your style does the same.
Then, when the holiday season is over, simply lift out the styrofoam piece and carry them to storage (for us this is an attic). The entire process couldn’t be easier!
Looking for more holiday inspiration? Check out my holiday posts here.
Have you DIY’d porch planters before? What did you include in yours?
