Many people love gardening. However, you don’t always have the room outdoors to garden as you want. Luckily, even those in urban areas can grow plenty of food if they utilize the indoor space that they have.
While an indoor garden is not necessarily as straightforward as an outdoor option, that doesn’t make them any harder. You simply need the right plan and know-how. With some luck, you can grow many different plants indoors.
Below, we’ve listed some of our favorite indoor plans. These can really make a difference when you’re trying to start your own indoor garden.
The 8 Best DIY Indoor Garden Plans You Can Make Today
1. Grow Light Seedling Shelf
| Difficulty: | Easy |
| Materials: | 1 GROM Shelving Unit, 6 utility lights, 12 screws, 12 x 7” length of chain, wire, and a power bar |
Depending on where you live, you may have to start many of your plants indoors. Otherwise, they may not produce food in time for the harvest (or they may produce less food). However, if you’re short on space, starting seeds indoors can be challenging. You probably don’t want plants taking up your whole kitchen table for weeks.
Luckily, this simple shelf allows you to start many seedlings. It also has the ability to work alongside a variety of grow lights. Therefore, you can grow even light-loving plants.
It is pretty easy to build, though you are using the GROM Shelving Unit as your base. It isn’t exactly completely hand-built, in other words. However, it does work well for those that don’t have tons of time to put into the build—it works great for minimum effort.
2. Potted Hanging Herb Garden
| Difficulty: | Easy |
| Materials: | Pallet wood, terra cotta plants, paint |
For those looking for an especially aesthetically pleasing plan, you may want to try this potted herb garden. It is designed to hang in your kitchen and provide you access to a range of herbs throughout the year. The design is rather simple, and you may have most of the items on hand.
For instance, the plan calls for pallet wood. If you don’t have a pallet, you may have to purchase and distress your own wood, which may be a bit more complicated than this plan is designed for. We recommend finding your own pallet wood if you can.
The plan calls for painting pots and you can theoretically paint them in whatever color you want. The example uses white and gold, but you can choose whatever you want to match your interior.
3. Wood Hanger
| Difficulty: | Moderate |
| Materials: | Various cuts of pine wood, wood glue, finishing nails, spray paint, rope, clay pots |
Suddenly have nowhere to put your plants? You may want to consider this hanger to give you some extra vertical room. Sure, using your countertops and tables works for a time. Eventually, you will need a dedicated spot like this one, though.
You can paint this simple shelf whatever color you like. However, the rustic black looks very good, and the instructions on achieving this shade are easy to understand.
This design works best for smaller plants but you can technically change the dimensions to fit whatever plants you’d like.
4. Milk Bottle Herb Garden
| Difficulty: | Easy |
| Materials: | Plastic bottles, wooden baton, scissors, craft knife, hole puncher, metal ruler, black marker |
For those looking for an eco-friendly and easy way to grow indoors, consider saving your plastic milk bottles for this DIY plan. You can upcycle your bottles into an easy indoor garden.
We particularly liked how easy this plan is, and it looks quite nice in the end. Plus, it does use recycled materials, which is always a plus. You can easily adjust this plan to fit your needs. For instance, you can make the hanger longer depending on the length of the wooden baton.
5. Simple Plant Hangers
| Difficulty: | Easy |
| Materials: | Lightweight pots, soil, paint, 3M command hooks |
For those that don’t have a huge number of plants to hang, you may want to consider this hanger. You can easily make as many as you need for a small number of plants and then hang them close to your window. They work particularly well alongside kitchen cabinets with herbs filling them. Plus, this plan only takes about 20 minutes to make.
We love that you don’t have to drill into the wall to hang these pots. All you have to do is use the command hooks, which allow you to hang pots just about anywhere. The pots do need to be lightweight, though. You can paint them whatever color you wish, making it easy to match them to your interior.
6. Cute, Indoor IKEA Planter
| Difficulty: | Easy |
| Materials: | IKEA Planter, spray paint, sealant, potting soil |
If you want something extremely easy (but also very aesthetically pleasing when you get done), consider this plan. Basically, it involves sprucing up a simple IKEA planter. Therefore, it is a lot easier than some other options out there—you aren’t actually building anything from scratch.
However, this planter is both simple and effective. You don’t have to put much work into it, but it works very well. Therefore, we consider it one of the better options out there for those that don’t have much DIY experience.
7. Window Planter
| Difficulty: | Hard |
| Materials: | Wood glue, spray paint, wood filler, wood stain, baker’s twine, label holders, cardstock, empty tea tins, 5-gallon paint sticks, pine board |
If you live in an apartment or smaller space, you may not have many windows, which can make indoor gardening challenging. Luckily, you can use this simple planter to make the most of your window space. For plants that love sunlight, this option is great.
You will need quite a few items, though, and this project is more difficult than some other options. Therefore, we don’t think that this project is necessarily right for everyone. You are making something from scratch nearly completely. Therefore, there are a lot more steps and it takes a bit longer than some other options.
8. DIY Vertical Garden
| Difficulty: | Easy |
| Materials: | Wooden handrail, wood stain, potted succulents, drill |
Technically, this vertical garden is for the outdoors. However, you can easily use it indoors as well, as long as you watch the dripping from the plants. With the right materials, this DIY plan is actually quite easy. You don’t have to do much, especially since you’re using an old, wooden handrail as the base. This project is great for beginners and those that don’t have very much time to spend.
If you don’t have a wooden handrail laying around, this option can be challenging if not impossible. You’ll need to track down a wooden handrail before you get started.
Related Read: 14 DIY Vertical Garden Plans You Can Make Today (with Pictures)
Conclusion
When you’re growing plants indoors, the biggest obstacle is finding the room to do it. Plants take up quite a bit of room. When you’re outside, this is less of a problem, as you usually have lots of room to work with.
Most of these plans involve making the most of the room you have. With these plans, you can move your plants up so that they aren’t taking up much-needed counter space. Furthermore, with some of the individually hung pot plans, you can shove plants just about anywhere.
For plants that need lots of sunlight, you’ll want to put them close to your window. We also included plans that involve making the most of the sunlight coming in through your window. For those that don’t have enough room, our first plan does include growing lights, which is vital for many plants.
Use these plans to make an indoor herb garden or start your seedlings inside.
Featured Image Credit: monicore, Pixabay
