You Grow Girl™

As someone with a neverending supply of houseplants, I get a wee bit tired of using the same old terra cotta pots for various ivy, spider plants, rubber trees, umbrella plants, Mother's Tongue plants, ferns and so on. I also don't want to settle for the Martha Stewart type plastic and ceramic containers you find in everyone's dwellings.

So it's been my personal quest to find the tackiest, kitschiest and possibly most disturbing planters around. Case in point, my gigantic ceramic frog planter. I bought this sucker in a random auction on eBay.com. I'm not even sure what prompted me to find it in the first place. But I did and now it's sitting on a short bookcase next to a sunny window in the kitchen. My carnivorous Cobra Lilies call it home.

Another slightly disturbing planter is a ceramic Jesus. Yeah you heard right. I couldn't resist it. And if a houseplant can't be saved by Jesus, then I suppose it was doomed from the start, right? Currently, my immortal Pothos plant lives in this religious planter.

Not only do I buy bizarre planters, but I also make them. I like to recycle old Halloween trick-or-treat buckets and decorations. I have a Mother's Tongue growing right out from an old plastic skull. It's very spooky so I keep it downstairs in the dimly-lit basement.

I also enjoy melting records into planters, or rescuing animal cracker containers and putting some English Ivy in it to grow with abandon. (Ivy will grow ANYWHERE). Of course, the more unusual the container the happier I am with it. My current passion is using old doll heads as mini-planters. And old cookie jars work well too. Just remember to drill in a drainage hole so your plants don't drown in love aka water.

No planter collection would be complete without a mushroom or garden gnome. Luckily one of my planters features both. Another random eBay find, this planter happens to be one of my favorites. I believe the mushroom is some sort of bolete and the gnome is a standard woodland variety who looks like he's waving and saying "woooo." I have one of my Mother of Millions plants growing in it now.

I'm always on the lookout for more and more kitschy planters. Right now I'm fortunate enough to own a few creepy white rabbit planters (for my Alice in Wonderland obsession), a little kid in a race car and a couple of duck planters. If you want to search for some unusual planters go check out your local thrift stores and garage sales. Or if you're too lazy to hop in your car or on your bike, go to eBay or any other online auction sites. Just don't spend too much! Remember also to recycle and reuse stuff you already have laying around collecting dust. Old shoes, broken typewriters, grandfather clocks, salad bowls, plastic cocktail glasses, mannequin heads and so on make interesting planters. Be creative and give your plants a home to be proud of.