WINDOWSILL GARDENS AND PLANTS

With Winter approaching (and already here with a blast for a lot of you!) our thoughts turn to keeping the green going.  One way to do that is to grow plants inside during those cold and dreary months.  One of the best places to do this is often a kitchen window, since it's usually over the sink.  That makes for ease of watering, sunlight for the plants, and gives you something nice to look at while standing there washing dishes.

At our house in the city, we do have a kitchen window sink, but it's ledge is pretty much non existent.  Maybe an inch wide at the most.  At the farm however, we have a nice, deep ledge above the kitchen sink so lately, I've been looking for ideas on how to keep some green plants going inside.

Here is some of what I found:

Vintage Coffee Can Garden

This is not in a windowsill but of course could be put in one very easily.  It's a collection of succulents growing in vintage coffee cans.  Very neat and colorful with all the graphics of the labels on the cans.  I'm sure cans like this could be found on sites such as eBay or Etsy and of course garage sales.  Very pretty.
 

Windowsill Garden Using Colored Glass Bottles

This is always a good choice, especially for a sunny window ledge.  This one uses colored glass bottles as vases.  The nice thing about this is that the glass acts almost as if it was a stained glass window, and when sunlight streams in, you get the nice color of the bottles as well. 

Twinnings Tea Windowsill Plantings

This one we love.  I don't know what it is, maybe the colors of the tins?  Or the retro style of the containers?  The square shapes?  Whatever it is, we just like the look.  Again, these would probably have to be found online at an auction type website if you couldn't find any in the stores.

Air Plants in Glass Beakers Windowsill Garden

This one is definitely unusual.  In this one, the person put air plants that grow without much watering (just an occasional spritzing of mist is all that's needed) inside laboratory style glass beakers.  I suppose you could put soil in them as well, but remember not to over water since the water can't drain out. 

Windowsill Herb Garden

And of course, you can always just use pots or containers of the same color, shape, and style in order to keep a more uniform look.  These are all white (might actually even be plastic?) and they are growing herbs.


The only thing left to decide after you pick your container is what will you grow in it? As you can see in the above pictures, you can grow just about anything with enough light and water.  Air plants, succulents, herbs, cuttings from other plants that you are trying to root, even flowers
(African Violets are a great choice for that).

Make sure that whatever you use, there is proper drainage.  If you use the vintage containers, there needs to be a hole in the bottom so water drains out.  What a lot of people do is put them in the sink to water them, wait for them to drain and then put them back in the window. You can of course also use something with a saucer.


I haven't yet decided what we will do, but all of these are nice.