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Awesome Ikea Hack of the Week: Trendy and hanging succulent garden

Now that we’re halfway through May and the weather’s (slowly) starting to improve, it’s about time to give some TLC to your Toronto apartment balcony. One of the nicest and easiest-to-care-for ways to bring some life to your balcony is with a clean-looking hanging succulent garden.

Not only are succulent gardens easy to make, they add instant colour to your outdoor space AND they’re pretty hardy! So, if like me, you forget to water them for two weeks, they might actually survive.

The parts. You’ll need

  • Lack side table – $15.99
  • 1 builder’s tube, try this one from Home Depot – $7.00
  • A 2’ x 2’ piece of chicken wire
  • About 30” of chain painted white, or replace the chain with leather or rope
  • Garden plastic
  • Saw
  • Xacto knife
  • Staples
  • Wood glue
  • Eye hooks to attach chain, leather or rope
  • Succulents, moss and potting soil

Do it.

Use the knife to cut through the laminate table top, and remove the centre portion, leaving a frame, essentially. Now peel away the cardboard hive that’s left inside the table. Next, measure out sections from the table legs to make the interior sections of the succulent garden. The original blogger made a 6” square in the centre, and attached that to the “frame” with four addition pieces of the legs, cut to size. Attach the pieces together using wood clue to form the holder, and let dry overnight.

Cut out rings from the builders’ tube so they fit inside the table, then line them with garden plastic. Cover with chicken wire. Now add the eye hooks and chain leather or rope for hanging.

Now you can add soil and the succulents to your garden. Hook the roots or stems of the succulents through the garden wire so they’re attached snugly and won’t fall off. Fill with soil, then cover the soil with moss.

Leave the garden laying flat for two to three weeks so everything has a chance to grasp the chicken wire tightly, so that when you hang it, your hard work doesn’t plop out in a big mess.

Source: Craftberry Bush

Erin Cardone: Born on the Prairies, Erin Cardone grew up knowing there was more to life than canola fields and AAA Alberta Angus. So she escaped, living in Europe and Australia, white-knuckling it through plates of calf brains and raw horse meat, and learning languages she can't remember anymore. After a stint as a jaded, skeptical journalist, she changed tack and began writing rather awesome blogs and showing businesses that advertising is dead, so long live social media, with her businesses Legendary Social Media. She now splits her time between various Canadian cities, Costa Rica and wherever else the wind blows.