If you’re trying to grow plants, you’ll need seeds, dirt, water, and sunlight if you hope to keep them alive. But did you know that plants grow extra strong when you feed them power pills? At least that’s what Pac-Man told me. Or maybe I’m just starting to hear things after being quarantined at home too long. Either way, this Pac-Man and Ghost planter set looks like a fun way to grow house plants.
Manchester, UK outfit RetroGamingCentre makes these colorful 3D-printed plastic planters inspired by Namco’s classic 8-bit arcade game. The set includes a Pac-Man planter, along with Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde pots. Apparently, Inky is as bashful as they said he was on the title screen of the game, and didn’t show up for the garden party. The set comes with a matching blue tray, decorated with white pellets around its edge. Clearly, Pac-Man hasn’t found any power pills yet, because none of the ghosts have turned blue.
The set is available over on Etsy, with prices ranging from about $50 up to $118, depending on the size you go with (6cm or 10cm) and if you want the tray. If Pac-Man isn’t your thing, they also make a Super Mario planter set, a couple of Pokémon planter sets, and also individual planters so you can mix and match.
Having plants in your home can really have a therapeutic and relaxing effect on you. It can create a sense of serenity and peace in your home, helping you feel at ease with your surroundings. As much as I love plants by themselves, designs that integrate plants into them, and also cater to my lifestyle needs are an added bonus! These product designs add a touch of green to our homes, all the while providing immense functionality and usability in our day-to-day lives. This collection of planter products range from an air purifier that doubles up as a planter, to a coffee table with a hidden miniature garden! Not only do they meet our ‘green’ requirements, but also the requirements of our home. I would love to incorporate these designs into my own home!
The Eva hydroponic fixture offers neglectful plant owners a no-effort solution in which the plant cares for itself – by merging an indoor garden with an aquarium! The Eva planter creates an environment in which the plants can survive without human help. How? By creating a symbiotic relationship between the fish and fauna that live inside it. The fishes produce ammonia as a waste product, which can become toxic in large amounts. As it happens, ammonia contains nitrogen, which is necessary for photosynthesis and helps with plant growth. In the garden above, the roots break down the ammonia, and the resulting waste product, nitrites, then become food for the fish. Simply put, it’s the circle of life — with only two organisms. Additionally, Eva includes light fixtures that mimic natural sunlight. This is not a new feature — we’ve seen it on similar planters — but it contributes to Eva’s mission: to sustain life in any indoor environment. It allows everyone to flex their green thumbs, even if their living spaces seem less than ideal for plant life.
The Briiv is a household terrarium, but more importantly, it’s a fresh take on air-filtration that ditches those HEPA filters and UV lights for something more natural. With the design that looks like a cross between a terrarium and an Apple Homepod, the Briiv is a modern-looking air purifier that adds a touch of green to your apartment. The filter comes with a special, sustainably-grown, dried moss on the inside that naturally purifies the air by trapping harmful particles, killing microorganisms, and releasing clean, fresh air. Sitting underneath the moss are multiple bio-filters, including one made from loosely woven coconut fibers, another filter comprising carbon-infused hemp, and a woolen microfiber filter that together combines to filter particles as small as PM 0.3 while also trapping and neutralizing bacteria, molds, and other volatile organic compounds to give you air that’s been freshened naturally, in a filter that’s designed to be the equivalent of as many as 3000 house plants in one device.
Providing a lovely dim light to your space as well as photons for a tiny kitchen-garden, the Brot is a lamp and planter combined into one slick, terracotta package. The lamp provides nourishment to a tiny kitchen-garden that you can literally pick from and use in your meals. The upper half of the Brot lamp houses the light, while the lower half acts as a torus-shaped vessel for growing plants. A stainless steel tray sits inside the lower half, acting as a holder for the plant. You can sow a variety of seeds in the Brot, and the process is pretty standard. The seeds need to be soaked in advance before being planted, and can then be placed in the Brot’s lower half. They need to be moistened (probably using a spray/spritzer) 2-3 times a day, and within a week you’ve got yourself a perfectly healthy, homegrown set of herbs or sprouts to use in your meals. Oh, and let’s not forget, the Brot can be used for ambient dim lighting too, because after all, it’s also a lamp!
SOLE, a home gardening system, poses first as a small coffee table only to reveal a hidden, self-maintained, miniature garden for city dwellers who want to fill their homes up with some natural greens, but not the fuss that typically comes with them. Thankfully, SOLE’s coffee table was designed to take up as little space as possible in order to fit into even the smallest of studios. Indoor urban gardening is usually practiced by using grow box containers that require a lot of window ledge space and natural sunlight – both of which can be hard to come by in city apartment searches. In order to make home gardening possible in any city-living space, SOLE maintains the perfect climate, temperature, and nutrients for you and your chosen plants so long as they fit inside the coffee table’s extensive body.
You love plants, plants love light, you love light, you’ll both love the Mygdal plantlight! It’s a revolutionary lighting solution not just because the luminaire is a completely self-sustaining ecosystem where the plants can grow undisturbed, but also because of its one-of-a-kind electrically conductive glass coating. It actually streams the electricity invisibly along the surface, so there’s no need for a cable connection between the power source and the LED. Bring even windowless spaces to life with a plantlight! The world’s easiest and most fascinating way of indoor greenery. They not only light up the dark but also bring nature indoors – even into spaces without any daylight. Thanks to their patent-pending SmartGrow technology, the plants do not require any care.
Designed by Ben Hansen, this simple yet innovative dog house uses excess water from watering plants and filters it into the dog’s water bowl! Rattan with green accents gives it a light, airy feel. The minimal dog house will brighten any corner of your home – hard not to when it holds a cute plant and pet! It’s an adorable piece of furniture that not only serves as a home for your pet but also doubles up as an elegant plant holder, harmoniously merging with the interiors of your home.
There’s nothing we love more than everyday lifestyle items with a twist! And if we get to save some water along the way, and grow a few greens… well, Milan-based DesignLibero’s ‘Fluidity’ allows us to do just that! Created by designer Ekaterina Shchetina, Fluidity serves a double function. A comely white dish rack by day, the multipurpose dish rack has an alter ego; it serves as a planter, or to be precise there are two built-in planters on its sides. Fluidity is designed in such a way that the run-off water from the freshly washed dishes trickles down to the roots of the plants, irrigating and nourishing them. The base, thanks to its fluid form, allows the water to be directed to the plant containers. Perforated at the bottom, the containers are filled with clay pellets and coconut fiber, to control the water environment of the plants and to keep the drainer base free from water residue.
Dubbed “Grow”, this is a hydroponic system for nurturing plants, herbs, and more utilizing water from dishwashers, washing machines, and toilets. The designer’s motive behind such a design is to offer indoor gardeners a more conscious way to water their greens. While using gray water for watering indoor plants sounds like a perfect idea, the initial information about the Grow proves a different scenario. From how it’s presented; when the water is flushed, freshwater flowing into the tank is first pulled by the planter system for irrigation and then it returns to the flush. This outrightly suggests that the Grow is not basically using graywater, instead, its utilizing freshwater for its needs. This may work beyond the idea of a worthy planter for the environmentally friendly; it for an instance sticks with us for the convenience of watering it offers. How the system checks the situation of overwatering or other tad bits of gardening, is something that still needs to come to light. Nonetheless, Grow does gives the notion of bringing nature into the home a new dimension!
‘
Designed by Nguyen La Chanh of Nection Design, The Moss Carpet looks at getting the grass to your feet, and that too in your bathroom! Made from imputrescible foam called plastazote, the mat includes ball moss, island moss, and forest moss. The humidity of the bathroom ensures that the mosses thrive. And that’s why you need to place it there and not anywhere else. Little gnomes not included.
There’s nothing that will bring a little life (literally) to your dwelling faster than a plant or two (or three, or four, or fifty!). However, not everyone is a fan of standalone planters and pots cluttering up their living quarters. The latest from Pentagon Design, the Kekkila Garden Series of home furnishings aims to provide plenty of room for all your favorite plants. The designs, which consist of shelving, boxes, ladders, and more, feature integrated containers and surfaces that make perfect homes for plants next to your books and other belongings. They take up the same size footprint that your standard furniture would occupy, only they give your space freshness and a natural component you can enjoy. Some units also contain built-in lighting to help plants grow indoors while providing illumination and ambiance to your room. Use them inside or out and put your green thumb to practice!
It’s long been established that gray water can be used for irrigating veggies and plants, provided the edible part of the plant remains untouched by it. This is important since water from washing machines, dishwashers, etc can have traces of chlorine, grease, salt et al. – which can be harmful to it. Yet, the use of graywater for irrigation, not only benefits in saving water, but it also ensures less dirty water contaminates the local water bodies. There have been numerous examples of people using used water in gardens, now an avid designer has conceived an idea of a planter that uses water from household facilities for growing plants.
Dubbed “Grow”, this is a hydroponic system for nurturing plants, herbs, and more utilizing water from dishwashers, washing machines, and toilets. The designer’s motive behind such a design is to offer indoor gardeners a more conscious way to water their greens. While using graywater for watering indoor plants sounds like a perfect idea, the initial information about the Grow proves a different scenario.
From how it’s presented; when the water is flushed, fresh water flowing into the tank is first pulled by the planter system for irrigation and then it returns to the flush. This outrightly suggests that the Grow is not basically using graywater, instead, its utilizing fresh water for its needs. This may work beyond the idea of a worthy planter for the environmentally friendly; it for an instance sticks with us for the convenience of watering it offers. How the system checks the situation of overwatering or other tad bits of gardening, is something that still needs to come to light. Nonetheless, Grow does gives the notion of bringing nature into the home a new dimension!
Remember when VHS tapes were the gold-standard in movie rentals? Seems like forever ago, doesn’t it? And where are all those VHS tapes now? I mean, besides my packrat parents’ basement? Landfills? Well, Etsy shop niftyrecyclables is doing their part to reduce, reuse, and recycle by selling VHS tapes that have been transformed into little planters. I’m going to grow a Blu-Ray tree!
Planters range in price from $25 – $30 depending on the movie title. You can even request a specific movie and, provided it isn’t too rare, niftyrecyclables will procure the VHS and turn it into a planter for $30. Obviously, Little Shop of Horrors is a must.
Provided you already have the movie you want to use, I can’t imagine modding a VHS tape for use as a planter is too difficult, even without instructions. Granted there’s no way I could do it, but I’m less of a do-it-yourselfer and much more of a destroy-it-yourselfer.
3D printed to resemble the Death Star II still under construction, Etsy shop StoryBrookBoutique is selling these Star Wars-inspired plastic planters. Available in 5 and 6-inch varieties ($16 and $24, respectively), one of these is going to look great on the window sill in front of my kitchen sink.
I like how the planter top isn’t perfectly circular, like the actual Death Star II while it’s being built. I think I’ll put a trailing plant in there and let it spill out over the edge and onto the window sill below. There’s no doubt in my mind it’s going to look great for about a month until the plant dies like so many did on Alderaan.
The mobile space station planters are available in traditional silver, or, my personal favorite – pink, which I can only assume is the color the Galactic Empire had in mind for its Death Stars before realizing how much all that paint was going to cost. Honestly, If I were Palpatine I would have done it anyway.
While the term “Plant Parent” has become a pretty standard term in the millennial lexicon, taking care of plants isn’t as easy as it looks! Sure, if you’ve got a dog or a cat, they let you know when they’re hungry, it’s easy to know when they’re bored or frisky, and you can take them to the vet when they’re unwell or unhealthy. With plants, not so much. There are a lot of factors that contribute to a plant’s health – soil, water, sunlight, pests, etc. But there isn’t any easy way of knowing what your plant needs… the BioCollar is changing that.
Designed by students at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, the BioCaller is a wearable that builds empathy between the wearer and the connected plant. When paired with a piece of hardware that goes into the planter, the collar helps you understand the plant’s needs through real-time feedback. It becomes moderately tighter when the plant needs water, gets warm when the plant has too much sunlight, and vibrates when the plant has an infestation. In doing so, the wearable aims at letting the plant easily communicate its needs to you, and enables you to be a better plant-parent.
The BioCollar was designed as a part of a larger system called the BioPermit – a service that uses the collar to test prospective plant-buyers to see if they’re empathetic caregivers (a lot like how people are interviewed before they adopt a baby or pet). Obviously, the system is a speculative one, with its main aim being to test future scenarios and see if sensors can be developed that convert plant-needs into haptic feedback. I can definitely see this getting translated into something as effective as a wrist-worn fitness tracker that tracks your plant’s progress, or better still, an app that lets your plant communicate with you!
Designers: Sammy Creeger, Elliott Wortham & Maria Jose Tamayo
What do you get the LEGO loving lover in your life? How about LEGO set #10280, the 756-piece Creator Flower Bouquet? The $50 flower set makes the perfect gift to build with your special someone and is being released just in time for Valentine’s Day. Plus these ones won’t be dead in the kitchen trash by February 21st.
Now just build a LEGO box of chocolates and a LEGO teddy bear and you’re all set for Valentine’s Day. And while these plastic flowers might not smell like their real counterparts, they will break into 756 pieces if you accidentally drop them. Real flowers can’t do that!
I plan on building this set with my wife, then spraying them with her favorite perfume so every time she stops to smell them she’s reminded of the Valentine’s Day I forgot to get her anything and tried to make it up to her two weeks later with a buildable LEGO bouquet. And they say romance is dead!
The one thing this quarantine has highlighted is how much we need living organisms to share our living space with – they don’t even need to be complicated! A simple plant in your home that you talk to, take care of, and is receptive to your attention is enough to make you smile. While pets can’t exactly speak our language, they can at least communicate with their owners far better than plants can – which is why being a plant parent can be a daunting task as well! What can help you out in this scenario is the technology at our disposal and the inventiveness a designer brings to the table. Pick your scenario – whether you want to merge your planter and a hanging light, a compostable planter to one that manages your plants and feed your aquarium, we have a planter that solves your plant parenting problem!
You love plants, plants love light, you love light, you’ll both love the Mygdal plant light! Nui Studio’s revolutionary lighting solution not just because the luminaire is a completely self-sustaining ecosystem where the plants can grow undisturbed, but also because of its one-of-a-kind electrically conductive glass coating. It actually streams the electricity invisibly along the surface, so there’s no need for a cable connection between the power source and the LED. Bring even windowless spaces to life with a plant light!
KAGURA was created by Chaozhi Lin so that environmentally conscious people can curate their very own self-sustaining indoor garden no matter where they live. KAGURA’s system is comprised of three main working parts: a container for food waste, an elevated light structure, and three soil pots. The food waste container is located on one side of the indoor planter and turns your leftover food scraps into compost for fertilizer. Composting is a method used to decompose organic solid waste and fertilize the soil for gardening. The slim, attractive light fixture is situated directly above KAGURA’s garden pots and provides the mini garden with nourishing light-energy. The indoor, gardening system is completely self-sustaining and conveniently sized in order to fit into any kitchen or living space. The system itself works after food waste is dumped into the container on the left-hand side, fertilizing the soil contained in the trio of modestly sized pots, each of which provides energy for plants to then grow and thrive.
The ceiling, pendant, and floor lamp called Ring is a European Product Design Award-winning interior light fixture designed by Jackie Luo and Wilfried Buelacher for Lampenwelt. The lighting fixture is ultimately a simple design, thanks to its hybrid of design attributes from both integral parts of this product: the common houseplant and lighting accessory. The lamp itself can be hung as a pendant lamp, but can also function as a floor lamp when not suspended from the ceiling. If the pendant lamp is the decided lamp, then the pots for houseplants can either be positioned in the center of the lamp’s ring or entirely done without. A centerpiece for Ring provides the placeholder for plant pots to hang from but can be opted out for a straight, iron bar. Alternatively, users can insert a spotlight that works to enhance the light coming from Ring, which can be used for any variation of the lamp. Thanks to the subdued yet infinite nature of the lamp’s circular head, houseplants are free to drape and grow as naturally as they please.
The Elevated Planters are a series of planters by Chris Ference with toothed bases. Made from anodized aluminum, these planters can easily be stacked one above the other, simply by getting the teeth/grooves on the base of one planter to lock onto the upper rim of another planter. The metal construction ensures a secure, strong fit, and the modular nature of the Elevated Planters allow you to build yourself a vertical jungle, so you can expand your garden without requiring a large space for multiple planters. The metallic planters come in a variety of sizes and colors too, giving you the freedom to mix and match your set, based on the plants you have (or intend to buy/grow).
The Eva hydroponic fixture offers neglectful plant owners a no-effort solution in which the plant cares for itself – by merging an indoor garden with an aquarium! The Eva planter creates an environment in which the plants can survive without human help. How? By creating a symbiotic relationship between the fish and fauna that live inside it. The fishes produce ammonia as a waste product, which can become toxic in large amounts. As it happens, ammonia contains nitrogen, which is necessary for photosynthesis and helps with plant growth. In the garden above, the roots break down the ammonia, and the resulting waste product, nitrites, then become food for the fish. Simply put, it’s the circle of life — with only two organisms.
The one-of-a-kind Terraplanter was developed by Eran Zarhi, an industrial designer and botanophile who wanted to make hydroponics easy and accessible. The Terraplanter comes in an inverted conical format, and stores water inside while the plant grows on the textured vertical walls of the outer surface. The Terraplanter, however, isn’t a single planter. It’s in fact, a cluster of 1,400 tiny planters that let you grow nearly hundreds of plants in/on the same pot, like a micro-farm… all thanks to the Terraplanter’s textured design. The reverse-knurled texture on the outside walls of the Terraplanter actually play a very important dual-purpose. Think of each one as a miniature planter. They hold the seeds during the germination phase, and act as textured walls for roots to latch onto when the plant has fully grown. These cells leech water from inside the planter, supplying them in precise quantities to the plant outside, so your plant always gets the exact right amount of water it needs.
SOLE, a home gardening system, poses first as a small coffee table only to reveal a hidden, self-maintained, miniature garden for city dwellers who want to fill their homes up with some natural greens, but not the fuss that typically comes with them. More people are moving into cities, which means that access to home gardening is decreasing since natural light is harder to come by and smaller apartment spaces, like efficiency studios, are preferred. Thankfully, SOLE’s coffee table was designed to take up as little space as possible in order to fit into even the smallest of studios. Indoor urban gardening is usually practiced by using grow box containers that require a lot of window ledge space and natural sunlight – both of which can be hard to come by in city apartment searches. In order to make home gardening possible in any city-living space, SOLE maintains the perfect climate, temperature, and nutrients for you and your chosen plants so long as they fit inside the coffee table’s extensive body.
The Brot by Benditas Studio is a lamp and planter combined into one slick, terracotta package. The lamp provides nourishment to a tiny kitchen-garden that you can literally pick from and use in your meals. The upper half of the Brot lamp houses the light, while the lower half acts as a torus-shaped vessel for growing plants. A stainless steel tray sits inside the lower half, acting as a holder for the plant. You can sow a variety of seeds in the Brot, and the process is pretty standard. The seeds need to be soaked in advance before being planted, and can then be placed in the Brot’s lower half. They need to be moistened (probably using a spray/spritzer) 2-3 times a day, and within a week you’ve got yourself a perfectly healthy, homegrown set of herbs or sprouts to use in your meals.
I have to hand it to designer Pei-Ju Wu, for the clever way they have integrated a planter, side table, and lamp, into this amazing piece of furniture that you can place in your living room. The lines are blurred due to the multiple functionalities of this piece, but the ingenious way they complement each other and come together as the Oasis is commendable. Picture this – you have a planter at the base of a table, which keeps green thanks to the integrated LED lights and stays hydrated via the clever funnel found at the center of the tabletop. Excess water simply drips down to the collection tray and evaporates back into the air.
With a design that looks like a cross between a terrarium and an Apple Homepod, the Briiv by Sean Sykes & James Whitfield is a modern-looking air purifier that adds a touch of green to your apartment. The filter comes with a special, sustainably-grown, dried moss on the inside that naturally purifies the air by trapping harmful particles, killing microorganisms, and releasing clean, fresh air. Sitting underneath the moss are multiple bio-filters, including one made from loosely woven coconut fibers, another filter comprising carbon-infused hemp, and a woolen microfiber filter that together combines to filter particles as small as PM 0.3 while also trapping and neutralizing bacteria, molds, and other volatile organic compounds to give you air that’s been freshened naturally, in a filter that’s designed to be the equivalent of as many as 3000 house plants in one device.
The US and other countries have been dealing with a wave of strange, unexpected seed shipments this summer, and Amazon has decided that the best solution is to clamp down. The Wall Street Journal has learned that Amazon has banned all sales of foreig...
Sometimes I struggle to really remember what life before the pandemic was. I remember it pretty well, but if someone were to snap and magically cause the virus to disappear, I’m not sure if I’d ever be able to go back to that life in an instant. The pandemic changed a lot of things, broke a lot of things, and forced a lot of us to restrategize. The guys at Modern Sprout know this too well, as their company, developed as a labor of love over time, suddenly found itself without retailers to stock and sell their products. Quickly deciding to pivot so that the company and its range of plant-loving products could continue to thrive, Modern Sprout returned to the very place they started… Kickstarter.
The Uplift Planter is an elegant combination of an elevated planter and an app-enabled grow-light. Designed to be used indoors, and styled to complement indoor spaces, this planter integrates the grow-light into it. The Uplift Planter grow light contains the color spectrum needed to support healthy plant growth while emitting a natural light that compliments your home’s decor, not disrupts it.
There’s a simplistic beauty to the Uplift Planter and its wireframe design. This minimalist approach helps the Uplift complement most contemporary homes (although the Uplift in an art-deco home would look incredible too). The planter comes with a base that it docks into – made of metal and powder-coated in a variety of colors to add a pop to your space. Mounted on the side of the planter is a height-adjustable light arm with a full-spectrum LED lamp that shines light directly on the planter below. The lamp is controlled by an app that allows you to program it, even fully customize your own schedule and control its brightness based on the amount of natural light already in your space. Apart from being height-adjustable to suit your plants, the light arm is removable too, and can be placed into any other planter to give other plants a boost. It’s a simple, well-executed idea that was born after Modern Sprout realized planters and grow-lights have almost always existed as separate products, and never a single solution. In that regard, the Uplift does what it sets out to. It ‘uplifts’ your plant by allowing it to grow, uplifts itself too, with that height-adjusting lamp that ‘grows’ with your plant, and uplifts the space it’s kept in, with an aesthetic that I can only describe as Sparking Joy. Don’t you think so too??
The Uplift Planter is an elevated plant stand with an app-enabled grow light designed to seamlessly integrate living green into any space.
Plants have become the new critical home essential. With each one you bring into your house, your further perforate the barrier between indoors and out, between nature and nurture.
The problem with most grow lights quickly becomes apparent the moment you decide to use one at home. They’re harsh on the eyes because they emit light in a spectrum optimized solely for plants, not people. The Uplift Planter grow light contains the color spectrum needed to support healthy plant growth while emitting a natural light that compliments your home’s decor, not disrupts it.
A plant’s proximity to a grow light is critical for success which is why they have made theirs adjustable so you can grow plants ranging from small seedlings to large botanicals. The adjustable light arm is removable too, so you can “stake” it into other plants that might need an extra boost.
Grow Your Plants The Smarter Way
The Uplift Planter has built-in brains, meaning you can pair it with the app over WiFi for granular control over light intensity, cycles and schedule, from a few feet to miles away. Includes recommended presets for partial shade, partial sun and full sun plants.
– Preset settings for different plant types
– Shared access of smart devices with any family member
– Fully customizable light schedules
– FAQs for device support
– Brightness control
– Manual on/off switch available
– Pairs with other Modern Sprout smart products
– Customer support access
Elevated Living
The Uplift Planter is designed for seamless integration within the home. Keep it in the kitchen for quick access to fresh herbs, in the living room for some easy ambience, or by the bed for a (green) reading nook that brings life and light to the darkest corners. The purposeful design brings the healing power of plants into every room.