Looking for small townhouse backyard ideas? Check out my deck decorating ideas with plants, including how I maximize my small space!
See my tiny yard this summer and my deck decorating ideas with plants!
Hey all! If you’re new around here, once upon a time I did a ton of DIY stuff. We’re luckily in a spot now that there isn’t really much left to do in our house…so I’ve done mostly smaller projects and plant care posts lately.
This post isn’t about plant care specifically, but here’s something I LOVE about the summer—the humidity. But only for my plants. Because they love the humidity! I actually hate it. But after the first summer taking my plants outside, I knew I had to continue it—they just flourish.
The first post I did about my backyard was in 2018 when we first finished everything. We put in a deck, did rock landscaping, put in some raised garden beds, did a DIY HVAC unit screen and a DIY paver coffee table, and more. You can see that original post here. That post has some before pics too!
In 2019, I was HONORED to have Better Homes and Gardens out to shoot our little backyard. You can see the post I did with images of the yard here. And then in 2020 we were all pretty locked down, so I did things a little differently—I brought a ton of plants outside and filled the deck with plant propagations. Check the 2020 post out here.
But this year? This year I really pushed the space to the max. Have a look here—
DIY hanging plant rod
So I’m just going to talk about a few of the things I did to help inspire your deck decorating ideas with plants. First, I had a TON of hanging baskets that I either purchased or wanted to bring outside for the summer. So I decided to mount a DIY hanging plant rod.
And hooo boy, I am testing the strength of it, LOL! Check it out below—it is bowing a bit, but it held up fine all summer. This is a really simple way to hang a lot of plants that you can adjust and move around as they grow without re-drilling holes.
Plants I’ve got hanging on this rod, let’s see—scindapsus treubii moonlight, ric rac cactus, cebu blue pothos, tradescantia nanouk, hoya chelsea, scindapsus pictus exotica, hoya curtisii, and more. Oh, and I have my big monstera deliciosa outside for the summer too.
I had the tradescantia in pretty much full sun all summer, and it about tripled in size. Absolutely amazing. The plants on the hanging rod were all in pretty much shaded but bright indirect light all day. They did fantastic. It was amazing to swing below them every evening. The cats loved it too.
Coffee table converted to plant shelving
If you also have a small space and are brewing on some deck decorating ideas with plants, shelving is the way to go. I didn’t want to invest in any shelving, so I decided to just convert the DIY coffee table we made into shelving. This worked great because there was some shaded room under it as well.
On top of the coffee table, I maxed out a bunch more of my non-hanging plants that don’t like direct sunlight. Scindapsus jade satin, philodendron Brandi, silver dollar succulent, fern leaf cactus, ficus triangularis, and more.
This area was mostly shielded from too much rain, too, which was great. Once the banana plants we planted in the ground on the far end of the deck got big, they provided even more shade. Bright indirect light + tons of humidity = lots of happy babies!
My philodendron Brandi was kind of struggling along inside through the winter, but it rebounded amazingly over the summer! It’s such a pretty plant. The silver dollar succulent took off with tons of new growth, too—this was its first summer outside in mostly bright indirect but some direct sun.
Banana plants—I can’t believe how big they’ve gotten!
One of the things I wanted to really focus on last year was incorporating more low maintenance plants that would come back every year. We planted one banana plant pup from my parents last year in June 2020, and here’s how it looked in June 2020, then September 2020, then August 2021!
My god, they are GORGEOUS! My parents weren’t kidding when they said they’d winter over in a big way. We just cut down all of the foliage after the first frost last year, and they re-sprouted like champs in late-March 2021.
What are your small deck decorating ideas with plants?
This has been such an amazing place to relax in the evenings all summer. Now that we’ve had several summers in this house, I’m excited just be in a spot where we’re mostly rearranging plants and doing minor landscaping. It’s September here and I’m excited for fall…but I certainly will miss the growing season!
Pin my deck decorating ideas with plants!
WOW! Looks wonderful. Thanks for sharing your ideas.
Thanks for stopping by Jan <3
Brittany, dear!
I just love how your voice comes through in your posts. You make it seem as though I’m reading something a personal friend has shared with me, and that’s a wonderful gift you have!❣️
I’m writing today, after reading a couple of your posts on Alocasia, to ask that you please please let your fella and/or a trusted friend read through your posts before making them official. I just read a post (think it was the one on how to save Alocasia ‘elephant ear’ tubers for the winter), and it reads that you watered a plant with ‘the house’. I’m thinking you probably meant ‘the hose’. There’s another sentence in a post on Alocasia that I re-read several times to try to make sense of it. (Shoot, case in point, my autocorrect just changed ‘skim’ to ‘slim’, and I had to go back to correct it.) 😉
I just want to point out that these kinds of typos and grammatical errors take your reader away from the flow of your message and diminish your authority as an expert (which you most definitely are 🌻). I learned this in a technical writing course: It’s imperative to have someone else’s eyes go over your work before submitting a piece because it’s just so darn easy to skim over our own writing without seeing the typos. This is because when we read our own writing, we hear our own voice internally reading the words we know we MEANT to write whilst keeping us from seeing the actual words typed out in front of us. That’s why it helps to have two or three people proofread before submitting a final draft. It’s a small thing but usually does the trick.
I apologize for pointing this out. I hope you don’t take this wrong. I would never want to be rude to my plant guide! 🌼 On the contrary, I want your words to prove your voice as a plant expert, rather than to distract anyone from believing you have every right to proudly claim that status.🌸 Because you are, girl! 💮 And your blog is your brand, so don’t let autocorrect tarnish that! 🌿 (And again autocorrect rears its ugly head by trying to change’girl’ to ‘grill’..see what I mean?)
I so appreciate your help with teaching me about how to grow and care for my new elephant ear babies! If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t take the time to write to attempt to help. You’ve helped me; I just hope to return the favor. 🤗 Your (again, autocorrect changed my intended ‘your’ to ‘you’re’ and I had to change it back) blog is amazing and I’m so grateful to have your advise and expertise to help me with my burgeoning love for plant parenting!
Welp, now I’ll just be on my way to turn off my autocorrect… 😁
Big hug from me and my two boy cats to you and Ms. Blanche! 🧡
Hi! Thank you so much for your comment 🙂 I totally understand the need for proofreading and error-free writing–however, I do this very part-time on the side, so I don’t have a lot of time or resources to invest in having someone proofread my work. I wish I did, but I barely keep up with my job, the blog, and my family as it is. Maybe one day!! I am glad you enjoy the posts though, and I’ll make more of an effort to be typo-free in the future!
Gorgeous! So some of your plants are not pet safe, how do you keep your cats from chewing them? ( Or maybe they just dont…. I have cats that do , so I have to be careful!)
Also, that one picture of your cat on the little loveseat, the kitty is wearing a jacket? What is that, I am just curious!
Great website, thank you!
Hi Rebecca! We have two kitties, one has no teeth and has absolutely no interest in plants. The other is a nibbler and likes the leafy plants, so I try to hang them or put them up high. The stuff I have down low like snake plants, succulents, and other things with thicker leaves he doesn’t bother! I have read about sprays you can put on plants to keep cats away, but I have just found I can’t have certain plants. I had to rehome my ponytail palm because my Henry would not stop climbing to get it, finally pulling it out of its pot! And the jacket thing he is wearing is a harness that velcros on. It attached to a leash too. He will jump the fence and run in the backyard (unlike the other one who can barely jump up to a chair), so it slows him down and keeps him from jumping out!