This Garage Staple Actually Might Be the Most Stylish Way to Display Your Plants

published Mar 22, 2021
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For plant parents that have accumulated more green babies than they have floor space or table surfaces, display options can sometimes feel limited. You may be dealing with a tight floor plan or running out of spare corners for placing decorative pots, and the last thing you want to do is part with any of your plants. After all, greenery adds so much life, personality, and color to a space, especially when you’re on a budget.

Sure, you can hang your plants from plain old hooks or brackets, but why not level up with a DIY ladder display, just like Asia Babbington did in the living room of her Chicago apartment? Safely suspending a small vintage or wooden ladder from your ceiling might be the most dramatic way to squeeze more pretty plants into any space. You get a lot of display surface area for hanging live plants here compared to the zero amount of floor space this kind of installation takes up, and this idea can even make watering and tending to some of your plants easier because you’re grouping them together. You could even add a dried arrangement to this spot, too, should you want more texture overhead. Babbington’s living room certainly offers plenty to look at, but her ladder plant display is a true focal point, thanks to its creativity.

Babbington was actually gifted this handmade plant ladder by a friend who was moving out of state. You could easily execute this same idea though by repurposing an old ladder or buying dowels or stock wood and DIYing your own piece in a size customized to your space. Obviously, you’ll need to look into what your ceiling is made of to figure out the best mounting materials to use to execute this installation, and make sure you take the weight of your plants into account when calculating proper mounting support. If you don’t want to mount a piece overhead because you’re renting (or for another reason), however, you could always place a ladder like this against a wall in an empty area and hang smaller plants off of it in a similar way. You’ll still create a really striking display where you can pack in tons of different plants.

While Babbington does have some more traditional plant hanging options throughout her home, the ladder plant display is the true winner in my book. It’s unique, stylish, functional, and can hold more plants than one single hook or bracket ever could!

Apartment Therapy’s Styling with Plants vertical was written and edited independently by the Apartment Therapy editorial team and generously underwritten by Greendigs.