Gardening Formula for Tall Planters

I was dining at a restaurant in Healdsburg over the weekend and as I exited I noticed the very tall planters outside the entrance with the gardening medley that never fails to produce an eye catching look. Perhaps you’ve heard of this gardening trick before? If it’s drama you want, then the “thriller filler spiller” gardening formula works every time.

I wrote about this formula eight years ago but I thought it was worth revisiting. The formula works just fine for medium sized containers, but like the pictures below that I took outside the restaurant, the formula is especially striking in taller planters.

Good thrillers are plants with spiked flowers or grasses that grow mostly vertical. They’re the eye catching centerpiece in the medley.

Good fillers are plants that fill the space in between the thriller and spiller, covering the stalks of the thriller and filling in around it. These can be annuals or even succulents, but they should be medium height to low growers.

Good spillers are trailing plants that grow over the edge of the planter and spill down and around it.

Here are five more examples of the formula, both simple and dramatic:

unsophisticook / source unknown x 2 / life on virginia street / southern living

I hesitate to provide a list of exact plants because performance varies by region. If you want to recreate this look, find plants that fit the descriptions above at your local nursery or garden department.

But you’ll also need tall planters and two of them frame an entrance or decorate a staircase nicely! Real stone, cement, or wood planters are super pricey, and one single tall planter can run several hundred dollars. (I’m looking at you Restoration Hardware). But I’ve always been a “look for less” gal so I rounded up six more affordable tall planters made of composite, resin, and plastic.

26” fiberglass / 20” faux concrete / 21” faux granite stone

26” solros cement / 19.5” rust resin / 19.5” ella black

I’ve always wanted to recreate the look of a tall stone and cement planters with a plastic base. These DIY projects give me hope it can be done! I’m going to experiment with this soon.

transform plastic planters into textured stone lookalikes