Project Valentine's Day

Here's a fun way to spend Valentine's Day for the whole family! 

A three tiered planter that can be used as a seasonal or holiday show piece. 

Think of all the possibilities!

Here we've planted cyclamen in the traditional V-day colors. These flowers will withstand the possible cooler weather that we can still get in February.

Here's what you'll need:

• 1 16" standard clay pot
• 1 8" standard clay pot
• 1 6" standard clay pot
• 1 bag (1 cubic foot size) potting soil
• paint (we used tempera) and foam brush
• clay pot sealer (spray on or brush to seal the pot)
• roughly 14-16 4" size flowers of your choice (cyclamen seen here)
• mountain moss to fill in gaps and for aesthetics 

You'll want to start by painting your pots and then sealing them with the clay pot sealer. Set them aside to dry according to the sealer directions. You can really get creative with your paint. 

We chose to only paint the rim of the pots white so that we would have a neutral base to decorate for future holidays.

Next you'll want to fill your largest pot with soil all the way up to about 4" from the bottom of the rim.

Lightly tamp down the soil to form a base for your second pot. Continue to fill the other two pots the same way. Then you'll stack the medium size on top of the large and the smallest on the very top.

We chose to fill the pots all the way with soil and place them one on top of the other so that when we water the top pot, the excess water will drain from the bottom of the top pot all the way 

through the other two pots.

Now it's time to place your plants! Carefully pull the plants from the 4" containers and place them into the soil.

You can space out the plants as close or as far apart as you'd like. We wanted a more full, almost "bushy" planter, so we kept them very close together. We alternated between white and red cyclamen on the bottom tier, and then alternated red and pink on the second tier. We saved the most beautiful pink cyclamen to be placed in the top pot. Lastly we filled in any gaps where the soil was showing with a little mountain moss to set off the whole project.

Make sure you water thoroughly when finished and enjoy!