Call us old-fashioned, but I think that traditional flower boxes in the windows of a house look nice. Every spring, I put my young plants in the boxes under our kitchen windows and wait eagerly for them to grow.
The colors and shapes of the flowers in those window boxes make our tiny house look better, and the truth is that they make us happy.
Traditional Window Boxes Are Perfect For Your Home
If you like to garden and want a simple, cheap way to make your house look better, you might want to think about getting a window box. Here are five functional (and pretty) reasons why you might like this idea.
1. Windowboxes Are Cheap
Plants
If you like to grow flowers, you probably enjoy going to a nursery to choose plants. If so, you know that just one cart of flowers can cost you hundreds of dollars. You can plant a lot fewer plants in a window box than you could in a section of your garden, so if you do one or the other, it will cost less.
If you can afford it and like flowers, you can plant them in the ground, pots, and window boxes. You can never have too many flowers!
In window boxes, having a lot of different colors close together is a good thing. You can also make beautiful living arrangements with plants at different heights and fall off the front of the box.
The fresh smells that will come through your windows and the hummingbirds that will stop by your nectar garden daily are two more benefits.
Fixtures
You can buy the brackets and the flower box to fit your window for between $30 and $40. If you think that’s a lot, you’re wrong. Once you buy your window boxes, you can keep using them every year. To put the brackets in, all you need is a drill. They can be put in siding, stucco, or brick. (If you’re putting them into brick, spend about $5 on a pack of masonry screws.)
2. Raise Curb Appeal
You can paint those flower boxes to match your decor. Over the years, I’ve spray-painted mine at least three different colors: the original tan, a green that fit our “slime-green” door that I went crazy with one year, and now a black that matches our shutters and stands out against the bright flowers. (Spray paint is a beautiful idea!)
You can also arrange your flowers by color. If your front door is red, you might want to paint your flower boxes red, or you could leave them black or white and fill them with only red petunias or geraniums.
It’s also nice that not all color has to be on the ground. Window boxes let you draw the eye to new and different points of interest.
3. Accessible Than Kneeling to Dig
Window boxes could be helpful if it’s hard for you to get down on the ground or even harder to get back up.
You can put an empty window box in the brackets and fill it with potting soil from small bags. Or, you can pour potting soil into a small bucket and set it on the ground. Then, you can keep bringing the bucket up until the flower box has enough soil.
Planting is easier when you can stand up or even sit on a bench or chair instead of bending over and kneeling.
4. You Don’t Even Have to “Plant!”
If you don’t want to move dirt or don’t want to plant, you can use window boxes instead. You can buy plants in pots that are big enough for them to grow in. Then you can just put the pots in the window box. How about three begonias? A couple of baskets you bought already full of plants? A bunch of different types of succulents?
Any of those things would work. Just keep in mind that if you don’t plant anything in the pots, you’ll have to water them every day, and they might not last as long as they would if the roots had room to grow.
5. Seasonal Displays
When nothing new is blooming in our garden in the fall, I put mums, dried hydrangeas, pumpkins, hedge apples, gourds, and Black-Eyed Susans in our window boxes. I don’t plant them, and I drop them in. If I want them to be taller, I sometimes put them on top of small plastic pots that have been turned upside down.
At Christmas, I’ve put fake or real greenery, big pinecones, plastic ornaments, and white lights in the boxes (either battery or plug-in, depending on the accessibility to electrical outlets.)
Conclusion
Just have fun! Your home is a safe place where you don’t have to show off. If you try windowboxes, you should know that they will change how you see the world.
When you look out the window and see a box full of blooms and a pot full of color, it’s hard to feel down.