Whether your green thumb is for indoors or out – this ladder plant stand offers maximum space for your plant babies and gives a ton of display and decor options within a very small footprint.
Good morning and Happy Easter for those celebrating!
It’s SPRING!
Well, the calendar tells me it should be Spring even though the weather still brought snow this morning.
Regardless of weather, the sunshine and birds chirping has me itching to get out in the garden and clean up the mess Winter made. While I can’t plant (without fear of frost) just yet – I CAN get my green on by building this ladder plant stand that can hold my plant babies until warmer weather arrives and later can be put outside to decorate the patio with lush lovelies.
Shara, over at Woodshop Diaries, has the simple plans for this ladder plant stand – so I won’t steal her thunder. Click over to DIY Plant Ladder Shelf for the cut list and instructions.
What I will share here is how I changed it up to suit my needs a bit better;
Where Shara built 6″ x 16″ boxes as shelves, I decided to go with slatted shelves since my ladder plant stand will end up outside eventually. I used ¾” x ¾” x 16″ (2cm x 2cm x 40cm) ‘dowels’ to create the slats and the supports for the slats.
You can find square dowels at some home improvement stores, or you can rip them down from scrap wood on your table saw. If you are lucky enough to have access to a planer, you will get an even cleaner finish. (less sanding)
This is a fantastic way to use up scrap wood bits you have in your garage – and as long as you use an outdoor wood glue, outdoor stain, and sealer (Amazon affiliate links) – your ladder plant stand should last for years.
I changed up the depth of the shelves as well because I wanted to hold larger pots on the bottom. I made one shelf 10″ (25.4cm) deep, one 8″ (20.3cm) deep and the last two at 6″ (15.2cm) deep. The braces for the slats were cut to length and then the slats attached with outdoor wood glue and finishing nails to hold them in place.
I cut the bottom of my ladder plant stand on the same angle as the instructions for the DIY Plant Ladder Shelf, but I changed up the top of the ladder sides by cutting them to line up flush with the wall. It’s an extra step you don’t need to do, but I was worried about someone bumping the stand and then the pointed corners of the ladder damaging my drywall.
To find this angle I just lined my ladder up against a wall, with the angled feet flat on the floor, and then used a ruler to trace the straight edge of the wall onto the ladder.
To attach my slatted shelves to the ladder sides, I marked the centre of each shelf and the centre of the ladder and lined up the marks at the heights Shara indicated in her plans. She didn’t indicate this step so you could have all your shelves flush with the back of your ladder plant stand – it depends on the look you want in the end.
I will say that the idea of using a consistent spacer was a MUCH easier way of attaching the shelves evenly and on the correct angle.
That’s all there is to it! Whether you make my ladder plant stand or Woodshop Diaries’ DIY Plant Ladder Shelf (or some creative version in-between), a few bits of scrap wood and perhaps two 6′ 1″x3″s (183cm x 2.5cm x 7.6cm) and a couple of hours of your time are all you need to get Spring started indoors and a head-start on Summer decorating outdoors.
Imagine this ladder plant stand dripping with thick ferns and dangling petunias. 😍
This is not the last of my plant stand builds folks – soon I’ll share the plans for the freestanding one decorating my front door!
Have a great one!