You dream vividly of the culinary indulgence of fresh-cut herbs, but alas, you don't quite have the real estate for a sprawling formal herb garden. Don't give up on your daydream! With these nine clever vertical herb garden ideas, you'll see it is possible to cultivate a functional and beautiful herb garden in a very limited space.
1. Hanging Shelves with Terra-Cotta Pots
This simple and striking DIY project, created by HomeMade Modern, is such a unique vertical display for an easy herb garden. Circular holes are drilled through inexpensive pine boards (with a 4-inch hole saw) to accommodate the pots, then the whole thing is strung up by rope and zip ties. Make one of your own vertical herb gardens by checking out the full DIY tutorial from HomeMade Modern.
2. Upcycled Metal Ammunition-Box Herb Garden
In this upcycled masterpiece from Ryan Benoit of The Horticult, old metal ammunition boxes are suspended from chains, then planted with herbs. For a similar look, try repurposing metal mailboxes or file boxes by drilling holes into their sides and using bolts to attach them to the chains.
3. Repurposed Spice Rack Herb Garden
Have you ever seen those inexpensive white wire spice racks that are meant to hang from the back of your pantry door? Well, garden writer Chris McLaughlin of the blog Laughing Crow & Co found one at a yard sale for three bucks and decided it needed to be a vertical herb planter: STAT. You can find out more about this and her other vertical gardening ideas in her book Vertical Vegetable Gardening (Alpha Books).
4. Repurposed Hanging File-Organizer Garden
Sometimes, office supplies can make for some unexpectedly awesome planters. Case in point: this adorable vertical veggie garden in a hanging file organizer from Inspired by Charm. Lining the wire compartments with hanging basket liners makes them perfect for filing your herbs (see what we did there?! Sorry, not sorry). See more of this easy and stunning project on Inspired by Charm.
5. Wall-Mounted Pipe-and-Metal Hanging Planters
These industrial-style beauties are the vision of Erin Hatzis' blog. The hanging metal trough planters were a store-bought find, but you can easily get a similar aesthetic using small sections of galvanized gutters strung up with natural sisal rope. Both of these materials can be found at your local home improvement center, where you're going to be headed, anyway, for some galvanized pipe to hang your planters from.
6. Hanging Shoe-Organizer Garden
This simple, inexpensive version of a vertical garden is from Farm and Foundry. Your shoe collection is about to get real messy, because you're going to want to repurpose that over-the-door canvas pocket organizer into an incredible living wall planter. You get the look of a fancy high-end wall pocket planter for a fraction of the cost.
7. Freestanding Hanging Gutter Herb Planter
What if you need to plant vertically but you don't have a wall to do it on? Her Tool Belt has it all figured out with this adorable DIY hanging gutter herb planter. Brightly painted vinyl gutters make perfect planters when suspended by colorful rope from an easy-to-build wooden frame. Kick up the charm by adding a hand-painted Fresh Herb sign and plant markers.
8. Hanging Paint-Can Herb Garden
Sometimes a vertical garden is as simple and sweet as figuring out a clever way to hang some adorable pots. Check out this DIY Paint Can Herb Garden from Simple Stylings. Quart-size paint cans get new life with a geometric dash of aqua paint, then hung from super simple dock cleat hangers. Find everything you need for this brilliant project at your local home improvement store.
9. Leaning Trellis with Hanging Bucket Garden
This easy-to-build and versatile leaning vertical garden structure is such an eye-catcher. It is made simply from trellis wood pieces screwed together into a grid, with colorfully painted bucket pots then hung in each grid square from an S hook. If the whole thing is placed over a plantable spot, you could even take it one step further and grow vines up it.