It’s time to think outside the pot

Cruise down any residential street and notice how many traditional pots and planters grace the front steps of neighborhood homes – usually identically placed on each side of the door.

They’re nice, of course, but a bit too conventional for Bethesda, Md., designer Marjory Segal.

“Using something a little offbeat or different creates a wonderful hello at the door,” says the woman whose own plants have resided on or in such eye-catchers as three-tiered antique French pastry stands and laminated hatboxes.

Segal likes unexpected containers of the sort that can been found in attics, garages, hardware stores or yard sales: vintage bicycles and kiddie wagons; retro suitcases and trunks; old wooden chairs; artful piles of granite cobblestones; even coiled garden hoses.

Turning a bike into a planter, for example, requires nothing more than filling the basket attached to the handlebars with flowering plants. A pair of side baskets adds even more punch. (A chain will secure the whole blooming vignette to a porch railing or column.)

Segal lines the bike basket with cocoa matting, which camouflages containers: inexpensive plastic or metal pots from garden and home stores, or disposable foil roasting pans from the supermarket. After filling these containers with plants, she hides all the exposed foil and unattractive gaps under mulch, moss or river stones.