Flower Pot Arrangement Tips

Ready to spruce up your porch for spring? Get your container pots ready with these flower pot arrangement tips!

I can tell that I’ve officially reached adulthood because I now care about landscaping and plants. My son actually said to me the other day, “Mom, do you love plants the way I love Pokemon?”, I laughed because he totally me. HA! The last few years my mother in-law and I have been going to a local nursery on their potting days to make container pots. I’d seen and read about how to do it online but for whatever reason when I’d go to the store – often with plant names in hand – I couldn’t figure it out. I’d leave empty handed and disappointed. Fast forward a few years and now I’m the one writing a blog post about flower pot arrangement tips! IT’S SO FUN! Unlike all the articles I read I hope that at the end of this you’ll leave feeling like you can tackle your own pots as well.

Flower Pot Combinations

Flower pot arrangement tips:

It’s ok to not know what you’re doing and to feel like you don’t get it. No one knows how to do something until they’ve done it. Be gracious with yourself while you figure it out, you’ll get there! (<–That’s a note from current me to past me. Hopefully it helps someone else too!)
If you have specific flower pots you want to use, empty out the dirt and stick them in your car. If you’re good at visualizing then you can absolutely skip this, but if you are really struggling this could help you.
Everyone says the magic formula: Thriller, Filler, Spiller. Thriller plants are usually the tallest plant in the post. Filler plants are generally a flower (I tend to prefer more compact flowers, but your pots are your choice) and Spiller plants are vines or plants that will spill over the edge of the pot. It’s a good rule and usually what ends up being in my final pots, but don’t get SO hung up on finding the perfect plant that you give up.
Go to the right place. I have a much harder time finding plants that really ‘click’ into place easy when I’m at Lowes, Home Depot and the big box stores than when I’m at plant nurseries. I’m not saying that they don’t have good plants (they do) but they tend to carry more standard flowers and the plants overall are smaller. Does this mean that I never buy plants there, absolutely not! The ferns for my front planters are from there and I just went and picked up a bunch of filler plants yesterday for some little spots I wanted to fill in. But to set yourself up for success from the beginning go to a local plant nursery (plus you’ll be supporting a local business which is always awesome).
- I generally stick to the big box stores for my basic plants like hosta, hydrangea, boxwood, creeping jenny, potato vine, ferns, etc. For variety hit the nurseries!
Grab a cart, load up your pots, and take your time (maybe leave the kids at home). Walk around the nursery and grab the plants that draw your eye. Don’t worry about if they go together yet, just grab what you like and put it in your cart.
Once you’ve made the rounds and have a few plants that you like pull your cart over and take stock. Did you already grab a Thriller, Filler and Spiller? Great, shove them together in the corner of the cart (or atop your pot) and see if they go together. The truth is there isn’t a magic formula for the perfect plant mix. My mistake was thinking there was a magic mix that just seemed to allude me. If your plants aren’t going together well that’s ok. Grab one plant at a time and start pulling your other plants around it and see if you can get any combos that you like. My gut says that you’ll probably have at least 1 combo of 2 plants that you like. Once you have that starting point take your cart and go and look for your missing Thriller, Filler or Spiller plant.
- PRO TIP: You don’t have to ‘love’ every plant in your pot. It’s about the overall look of the pot and the end result is more important than the individual components. Don’t get caught up about finding the ‘best’ of each ingredient!
It’s ok if you’ve been at the nursery for a long time. Don’t get frustrated that it’s taking a long time, new skills don’t usually happen overnight. 🙂
Now, if you are still struggling there is an easy thing you can do to make sure you don’t walk out the door empty handed. Find one of the employees at the nursery and ask if they have someone who can help you build a container pot. Most local nurseries will have a desk or employee that does that and they will be happy to help!
Once you have all of your plants in hand, I have one last tip: buy more. Increasingly I find that I will buy plants for my pots only to come home and feel underwhelmed at how skimpy the pots look. Yes your plants will fill out over the course of the summer, but if you are someone who wants to come home, get your hands dirty and then admire your handwork immediately (ME) – you need to buy more plants. If you’ve brought your pot with you to the nursery (and they are totally fine with this btw) then you will be able to see exactly how your pot will look when it’s finished. On my last round of pots I didn’t double the thriller because the plant was already full, but I doubled up on the filler and the spiller because they looked a bit skimpy and they were the more inexpensive plants. Again, there is no magic mix or secret ingredient list so do your best and begin to train your eye!