How to create a hanging impatiens basket

For a really long while, I had an awful backyard. It was sloping towards the house, and compromised of cracked patio stones, old leaning fences, and patchy grass. A couple of years ago, I had a really handy boyfriend who took it on as a project to build me an awesome deck. He’d tell you that I helped and I did, but the majority was him.

This has opened the floodgates to my love of flowers and how to best arrange my backyard for them to get the best sun. There is a side that doesn’t get as much sun and after during some research, discovered that impatiens are more of a shade flower. I came across this post from the “My Growing Creative Life” and decided to take this project on.

Materials:

Hanging basket with the brown liner
16-18 impatien plants
Potting soil – I use a moisture control soil from Miracle-Gro

Tools needed:

Scissors (to cut the holes in the hanging basket liner)
Garden trowel

Instructions:

**NOTE: Be sure to cut the holes in the liner while the liner is in the hanging basket. That way you know exactly where the wires are and where to avoid them! I learned this the hard way the second time I attempted it and didn’t follow any instructions 🤣.

Put potting soil in the base of the basket.
Cut 8 holes around the circumference of the basket as equally as you can above the soil.

Take the impatiens out of their containers. Cut off a little of the bottoms to encourage the plants to take root.
One by one, take each plant and push through the hole from the outside in – meaning that the little root ball is pushed through the liner in towards the inside of the liner. You may need to make little slits in the hole to get them to fit it. This is preferable because the bigger the hole, the more likely soil can fall out.

After all 8 of the plants are push through, add a little more soil to cover them.
Arrange the remaining plants and add more soil to keep them in place.