We don't have a lot of space so we built a coat rack planter as our version of a vertical garden. It's pretty simple if you have a drill and hardware store nearby. The coat rack and wine boxes were found on craigslist. The most expensive part was actually the plants, unless you visit your neighbor's garden for some late night harvesting. It's an afternoon project that will finally use that corner of the room while bringing a little green on in.

Step 1: Gather Tools, Wood, and Coat Rack (or Anything Tall That Can Hold Weight)

What we used:

- coat rack (ikea from cragislist)
- 3 wine boxes (craigslist)
- 3 corner brackets (size of the bracket will depend on the box but generally, a 6 holed bracket should be fine)
- 6 1/2" hex bolts with washer and nut for each (to bolt the bottom of the box to the bracket)
- 6 2" hex bolts with washer and nut for each (to bolt the side of the box into the coat rack)

Everything depends on the width of the coat rack - 2" hex will get us from the inside of the box, through the coat rack, and clear to the other side with enough room for a washer and nut.

Tools:
- drill
- drill bit
- hex nut driver

Step 2: Drill Into Rack and Boxes

Mark the holes on the coat rack and drill straight through. We only made two holes per box. It was easiest to drill the first hole, secure a bracket in place, then drill the second hole using the bracket as a guide. It's useful to push against a scrap piece of wood while drilling if you don't have a saw horse. Push hard while drilling!

We spaced out the boxes as two on one side (top and bottom), and the middle box on another side. They were about a foot apart.

As for the boxes, we just marked the holes and drilled. Two holes on the bottom and two on the side.

Step 3: Securing It All Together

Secure the bracket to the bottom of the box using the smaller hex nut and hex nut driver.

Do the same with the longer hex nut, but secure it by inserting the hex nut from the inside to the outside of the coat rack. It doesn't matter which way you secure it, we just found it easier to do it this way. Because our bottom hole and side hole were so close to each other, to secure it both on the inside of the box would have made tightening the nut a bit harder. So, it seems, we were just lazy.

Step 4: Finish Putting All the Boxes on and Filling With Plants

And now, just secure each box to the rack.

I lined the boxes with plastic bags then filled with plants.

Enjoy!

On a side note, we thought we would have to reinforce the coat rack to the floor due to the weight of soil/flowers, but it held up fine. Depending on what you use as the vertical hold, you may have to add weight to the opposing side.

Hope you liked my first instructable!