How to Plant a Teacup Garden

Photo courtesy of Ivo Raeber

Tired of all the same old boring planters available at garden shops? You can make your own unique planters by creating a teacup garden. With a few simple tools, you can turn any teacup or mug into a planter that fits your preferred aesthetic.

Here’s what you need to know…

Why teacups

With teacup gardens, you can keep a garden pretty much anywhere, regardless of whether you have outdoor greenspace or even much indoor gardening space.

You can find teacups in a variety of styles at thrift stores and antique shops, which makes it a fun pastime to seek out the right designs for your garden.

Another nice thing about planting in teacups is that you can have as many or as few as you want, easily customizing your garden size.

They also sit nicely on ledges and window sills, as well as tables.

In fact, you can keep a teacup garden on the edge of your bathtub, if it has a flat surface.

The plants on a tub ledge like this could easily be put in teacups.

Plus, a plant in a teacup is a perfect way to give flowers or other plants as gifts without having to go for cut flowers that wilt and die soon. The teacup can even fit nicely in a windowed gift box.

Whether you want to keep a single plant in a teacup, a whole teacup garden, or gift a teacup planter to someone you care about, the process is fairly simple…

Step-by-step teacup garden

To get started, you’ll need to gather the following supplies (linked items can be found in our store):

• Teacups or mugs
• Potting soil
• Pebbles
• Optional charcoal or mulch
• A drill with a diamond drill bit
• Painter’s tape
• Water
• Flowers, succulents, or other small plants

Then follow this process:

1. Select the teacup or teacup you want to use for your garden.
2. Stick a piece of painter’s tape to the bottom of the teacup or mug, over the area where you plan to put drainage holes.
3. Pour water over the tape so the surface does not get too hot during drilling, which could crack the mug.
4. Drill drainage holes in the bottom of the teacups, using a diamond drill bit that can drill through ceramic. Start with the bit angled at 45 degrees to start the hole, and then straighten it to 90 degrees to make an even hole.
5. Put a layer of pebbles in the bottom of the cup for drainage.
6. You can put an optional layer of mulch or charcoal here for extra help with drainage.
7. Fill the cup to about the halfway point with potting soil.
8. Add the plant to the cup.
9. Fill the cup in the rest of the way with potting soil, high enough to fully cover the roots.
10. Press the soil down a bit so it is not loose.

And that’s it.

We’d love to see your teacup gardens. Show us your finished planters on The Tye-Dyed Iguana Facebook page. And remember that we’ve got plenty of succulents and other small plants to choose from at our shop in Fairview Heights.

Diedra Blackmill is head copywriter and content marketer at Telepath Writing Services. She specializes in writing blog articles, newsletters, and scripts that generate more revenue for businesses. Hire Diedra for your online content.