An Introduction to Garden Potting Benches

An Introduction to Garden Potting Benches

A potting bench is a very useful tool for gardeners of all levels. If you do a lot of gardening though - particularly if you do a lot of indoor or outdoor container gardening - you may find this handy little tool or accessory just what you’ve been looking for.

A potting bench makes potting, planting, and transplanting your flowers and other greenery much easier to do. And having a potting bench is the next best thing to having a full fledged potting or garden shed.

Potting benches take up less room than standard garden sheds to, and they’re often just kept on the back porch or patio for ease of access. Most are made of some type of wood, and they come in a variety of sizes with different features too.

Some potting benches for instance, have a small shelf above the main potting surface area. This makes it easy to lay down small clippers, pruners, gloves, and plant markers as you’re working, without having to worry about finding them again when you need them later.

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Garden Tip...

It is a mistake to crowd too many plants into a basket, if they grow they will soon become root-bound, stunted, and look sickly. If the hanging basket be of the ordinary size, one large and choice plant placed in the centre with a few graceful vines to droop over the edges, will have a better effect when established and growing, than if it were crowded with plants at the time of filling. Hanging baskets being constantly suspended, they are exposed to draughts of air from all sides, and the soil is soon dried out, hence careful watching is necessary in order to prevent the contents from becoming too dry. If the moss appears to be dry, take the basket down and dip it once or twice in a pail of water, this is better than sprinkling from a watering-pot. In filling hanging baskets, or vases of any kind, we invariably cover the surface of the soil with the same green moss used for lining, which, while it adds materially to the pleasing appearance of the whole, at the same time prevents the soil from drying out or becoming baked on the surface.
~ James Sheehan
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Some potting benches might also have small pull out drawers on the front, below the main potting surface, and this also makes small tool and supply storage easier. You can keep seed packets in these drawers for instance, or your hand tools, gloves, and other gardening necessities.

Most potting benches will also have a lower shelf close to the ground, and this is a handy place to store bags of potting soil, fertilizer, and watering cans.

The main potting surface area of a potting bench is where most of your gardening work is done though, so this tends to be the primary feature of any commercially available ready made benches. The potting surface is usually large enough to hold several garden pots, small starter seedling plants, tools and other items you might use while potting your plants.

These are often designed at a standard height level which is comfortable for most people hen they’re standing up. If you’re gardening for quite awhile though, or you have problems standing on your feet for very long, you can often buy bar stools which will allow you to sit in front of the gardening bench and still be able to work comfortably.

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Garden Tip...

There are a great variety of opinions as regards the most effective way of planting flower-beds. Some prefer to mix plants of different colors and varieties, others prefer the ribbon-style of planting, now so generally in use in Europe. If the promiscuous style is adopted, care should be taken to dispose the plants in the beds, so that the tallest will be at the back of the bed; if the leader is against a wall or background of shrubbery, the others should graduate to the front, according to the hight. In open beds, on the lawn, the tallest plants should be in the centre, the others grading down to the front, on all sides, interspersing the colors so as to form the most effective contrast in shades.
~ James Vick
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Most potting benches are made from wood, with Cedar being a popular type because it smells so good and deters pests. You’ll also find several designs made from wrought iron though, and even some which are made from a combination of wood and metal.

If you like creating things yourself, you’ll find instructions for creating your own wooden potting bench in a few places online. It only takes a bit of planning and can be done in a weekend or less.