Sunday 22 August 2021

Aerial Gardening with a forest of Macramé hanging baskets ...

 It started with a YouTube video and a ball of string …

I had more hanging plants than I had pedestals to put them on, so, with overcrowding at ground floor level, the only option was to go multi-storey, and reach for the ceiling. 


Macramé hanging baskets
Macramé hanging pot-holders 



Seriously, if you can master the basic Square Knot, you're half way there; pretty much everything else is a variation on a theme. 

Macramé pot hanger
The Inch Plant with a 3mm macramé cord hanger

Most of the how-to videos on YouTube suggest that you attach your plant hanger with a gathering knot onto a wooden curtain ring. I found the wooden ring impractical as it was difficult to attach to anything else. It's bulky and needs a hook to connect it. So I cut out the middle man and went straight for the hook. I'd got some steel kitchen hooks for hanging saucepans with, and I used a gathering knot to attach the pot hanger straight onto the bottom hook of one of those. So that left me with a live hook, which was ready to hang onto whatever fixture was to hand. 

I also found some hanging basket pulleys, which are great for pulling the plants down when they need watered and then pushing them back up so that they're not hitting everyone in the face. And with the live hook I was able to hang the whole ensemble directly onto the mounting ring of the pulley without needing any other connectors. Simples!

And then I also got to play with macramé beads. Luckily I'd got a few in my stash that had been bought in error for knitting projects where their too large central hole made it difficult to keep them in place on the stitch, even with Chunky or Aran weight wool. But if you've got any beads lying around from broken costume jewellery, this would be a great way to incorporate them into your home décor and channel your inner boho!

Macramé pot hanger
Macramé pot hanger made from parcel string

Anyway … I started off with this video from YouTube, and a ball of parcel string. I'd got some tiny plants growing on from cuttings that I'd taken from my favourite succulents, so I strung them up with hangers made from the parcel string. It was a modest beginning but the economy of scale worked out okay.

I particularly like this combo below with a saucer, which lets me see whether I'm over-watering. The String-of-Pearls likes to have plenty of light and hates to live with wet feet. 

Macramé Pot Hanger
Macrame pot hanger made from parcel string

And here's the thing: when you  try to disentangle plants from a hanger and take them out to pot them on you always damage them. It makes me wince, and threatens to bring me out in hives. But if you've only invested a part of a ball of parcel string in the whole project you can mercilessly cut the arms of the holder to remove your precious plant as painlessly as possible. So I'm thinking when these little chaps have grown on … I'll just scissor them free and move them on to their next home. 

Macramé pot hanger
Macramé Spider Plant

Macramé hanging pot
Macramé Devil's Ivy

And in all of this I've used a square knot, a joining knot and a half square knot to create a spiral rope. 

Enjoy!

Bonny x



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