Harvest Season Front Porch Planters

I finished the porch wall trough planters this week. I had mentioned going to Dollar Tree and spending $10 plus tax on some faux florals, pumpkins, and leaf sprays. I also said I'd try to go to another Dollar Tree and pick up a couple more sprays to fill out the planters.

To hold the faux decor in place, I used the lid to a styrofoam cooler, cut in half.

I had a can of spray paint in brown that I bought for another project. Styrofoam really soaks up the paint. A few coats later, and I had 2 brown flat sheets for the troughs.

Above are the additional pieces I bought at the other Dollar Tree. I spent $5 plus tax on 2 sprays of cattails and 2 sprays of yellow marigolds. I cut all of the sprays apart into single stems so I could divide some of the elements in each arrangement.

Laying this all out, I could see the troughs would look a bit sparse. So I dug through the box of free pile faux foliage and found fern, ivy, and leaf pieces.

I took some time over the weekend to lay it all out in a pleasing arrangement.

Again, I could see it would still look sparse and show too much of the brown styrofoam. I added a roll of boxwood garland to secure around the highly visible edges.

The styrofoam pieces needed a little trimming down to size with a serrated knife in order to fit inside the coir liners. Once I had them sized right, I placed some plain blocks of styrofoam under the brown ones as support.

Many of my florals had stems that would poke into the styrofoam nicely. For those pieces that didn't have any such stem, I added toothpicks. This is to prevent birds, squirrels, and wind from tossing these objects around. I secured lengths of the boxwood garland with regular U pin hairpins.

For the loose leaves, I made stems using hot glue and toothpicks. To make inserting the pieces easier, I used a wood skewer to pre-poke holes.

Ready to see the finished product? Drumroll, please.

And here's one of the finished planters.

My front porch is looking ready for harvest season, which will carry us through Thanksgiving. I'll switch out the planters with something wintry the first of December.

So, costs -- 

I spent $15 plus tax at Dollar Tree to create both arrangements. That's $7.50 each! I also spent $18.50 plus tax on the two coir trough liners.  The second expense is for reusable parts of the troughs that will be used 4 seasons of the year for a long time. I think my costs are pretty reasonable, and I created something very similar to an autumnal window box that I had seen online.