Garden urns and pots to enhance your space

Looking to bring a stylish element to your outdoor spaces? Then consider the many uses of garden pots and urns. Not only can they hold and highlight your precious plants, they can be used as garden features in their own right.

With the average Australian garden getting smaller, it's even more important that we use the space we have wisely. Often we want to be able to combine play spaces, entertaining areas and visually pleasing features all in one small outdoor area. That's where garden pots and urns come into their own.

Are they useful as well as pretty?

While they provide a vehicle for growing plants in small spaces, they also have the potential to create a gorgeous aesthetic effect. Danny Proud from Adelaide's Garden Grove Supplies has noticed a huge increase in the range of garden pots and urns over the past five years.

"Because you can now get so many different shapes and sizes of pots and urns, it increases the potential to do great things with them," he says. "You've got a larger range of plants that can go into the pots, and a larger variety of outdoor spaces that will suit the urns."

The difference between pots and urns

Urns are generally taller and skinnier than pots, and although you can place a variety of plants in them, they can also stand alone as focal points within a garden design. Large garden urns in particular can make a strong garden feature, particularly when combined with a pedestal base.

Types of pots and urns

With so many materials to choose from, there's something to suit almost any garden design. While fibreglass and cast iron garden urns lend an elegant touch to outdoor spaces, stone, concrete or terracotta urns provide a more classical feel.

Grow dainty creepers down them; fill them with water and plant water lilies; or turn them into water features with tiny fountains sending water down their sides. "Just remember to seal concrete or terracotta urns before using them as water features," says Danny. "It's hard to tell by looking at them whether they'll be waterproof."

Choosing pots and urns for your garden

When selecting pots and urns for your outdoor spaces, it's important to show an element of restraint. Six pots of wildly different colours and shapes will give your garden a chaotic look, while pots in the same colour and finish, but with a slight variation in size and shape, will complement each other.

"Then you can put them in clumps or groups or individually space them out," says Danny. "There are a number of different aesthetic effects you can achieve with a bit of planning and forethought."

To see the range of choices available in garden pots and urns, find a nursery or garden supplier in your area: