How to plant a hanging basket

Gorgeous colour, aromatic herbs, delicious fruits, you don’t need acres of space to enjoy plants. With hanging baskets, you can brighten up your outdoors without so much as a shovel! Hang in your front garden to welcome guests, on your balcony for a slice of nature, or anywhere you want to highlight.

Coordinate them with beds and borders for a matching look or give them their own distinctive style for gardening glory at raised heights. Eye-level show stopping colour is easy to achieve with our simple steps to creating a hanging basket.

You will need:

Step 1

Place a liner in the basket (if it doesn’t have one already) and half-fill it with moisture-retaining compost.

Add water-saving gel and slow-release plant food to help keep the plants moist and nourished throughout the season. Slow-release plant food comes in granules, sticks and nuggets that can easily be pushed into the compost

A person pouring compost from a bag into a hanging basket liner.

Step 2

Around the sides of your basket, gently push the roots of trailing plants through the hanging basket liner, and firm them into the compost. Do this all the way round the outside of the basket, and add a little more compost.

A person wearing gloves, pushing the roots of trailing plants through a hanging basket liner.

Step 3

Arrange the remaining plants in the top of the basket: one in the middle and the rest around the edge.

Firm more compost around the root balls, keeping the final level a few centimetres (cm) below the top of the basket to allow room for watering.

Water plants well.

A person arranging plants in the centre of a hanging basket.

Step 4

Select your spot for hanging. We recommend hanging your basket well above head height to avoid accidents. You can even attach to wooden fencing by securing it to the fence post.

Once the hanging spot is decided upon, mark the fixing holes in pencil and check they're vertical with a spirit level.

If securing to an exterior wall, select the hammer action on your drill and drill with an appropriately-sized masonry drill bit into the brick, not the mortar. Drill deep enough so that the wall plugs can be inserted fully and clean the hole out.

Using a drill to make a hole in a brick house wall.

Step 5

Insert the right-sized wall plugs for the hole and tap in gently with a hammer until they're flush with the wall.

Fix the bracket to the wall with the screws and check that it's firmly attached.

Using a drill to drive a screw through a hanging basket bracket into a house wall.

Step 6

Hang the basket to the bracket using the chains, then water it thoroughly.

A hanging basket suspended from a hanging basket bracket, which has been installed on a house wall.

Step 7

Continue to water at least daily, if not twice a day during the height of summer, as even with the help of water-retaining gel, hanging baskets can dry out very quickly.

Supplement the slow-release plant food with regular liquid feeds to give your plants an instant boost.

Using a hose to water the top of a hanging basket.