If you’re tired of buying expensive coconut liners every spring, then you’re going to love my cheap solution, and you can do it yourself.
I came up with this idea way back in 2011, and my DIY alternative liners look just as great today as they did when I first made them.
This inexpensive project is easy to do with materials you probably have lying around the house. Plus, my coco liner substitution looks awesome, and lasts for years without having to be replaced.
I have a few of those wire basket planters that came with coconut liners when I bought them. The coco liner always looks so beautiful when freshly planted with summer annuals.
But after a season or two, they start to look dingy and gray. Plus, the birds like to tear the coco fiber apart to use for building their nests. The result? Well, it’s not pretty.
I love my wire basket planters, but they are unusable without the coconut liners. I could buy fresh replacement ones every spring, but that gets to be very expensive.
I don’t know about you, but I just couldn’t justify the cost every year, so my favorite wire planter ended up sitting in the garage. And every time I looked at it I felt sad and frustrated.
It finally got to the point where I was either going to get rid of it, or figure out how I could make it usable again. Challenge accepted!
What To Use As An Alternative For Coconut Liners
One day while I was cleaning the garage, I found a bunch of leftover landscaping fabric that was just collecting dust. Aha! I found my solution.
When I came up with the idea, I was so excited. Not only is the fabric much cheaper than buying brand new coco basket liners, but it will also last longer.
If you don’t like the idea of landscaping fabric, a burlap liner will give you a similar look as the coco liners, but will last longer. You can buy it in a roll, and use that instead.
Otherwise if you prefer the coconut liners over the fabric options, it’s cheaper to buy it in a large roll than it is to get the preformed sizes.
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How To Make Easy DIY Landscaping Fabric Planter Liners
This works great as an alternative for any type of coco liners, including a free-standing planter like mine, wire hanging baskets, and deck railing or window boxes.
Supplies Needed
- Wire planter or hanging basket
- Landscaping fabric
- Sharp scissors
- Floral wire
- Wire cutters
Instructions
Step 1: Cut the fabric – To figure out how much you need, lay the landscaping fabric over the wire basket and press it into the bottom. Then cut the fabric so you have a good 3-4 inch overlap all the way around the top of the basket.
Step 2: Attach the fabric to the basket – Cut a 3-4″ piece of floral wire with your wire cutters and bend it into a U shape. Then use it to attach the fabric to the basket by poking the wire through the liner, and twisting the ends together on the inside of the basket.
Step 3: Straighten the liner as you go – Repeat step 2 to continue to attach the liner to your planter at each cross section. As you work your way around the basket, straighten the liner and fold it nicely so the landscaping fabric wouldn’t bunch up in one spot at the end.
I found that it helped to add soil into the liner as I worked my way around the basket to weigh it down, get it into the right form and shape, and also to hold it in place.
Step 4: Fill it with soil – Once the fabric is attached all the way around the wire basket, finish filling it with soil. Then gently press it down to make sure the liner is firmly in place, and there aren’t any weird folds or gaps.
Step 5: Trim off the extra fabric – Trim off any extra fabric that’s sticking out above the top of the basket so that it’s even with the rim of your planter. Don’t cut it too short, or it could pop through and spill out some of the soil.
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Step 6: Plant your brand new wire basket – Now that you’ve added your alternative coco liners, you can plant your wire basket again with anything you want.
To save myself even more cash, I decided to plant a mix of hardy sedums in mine rather than using annuals that need to be replaced every spring. That way, I can just overwinter them in the garage and keep them growing year after year. It doesn’t get any easier than that.
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Look at that, my wire basket planter is brand new, and I never have to buy expensive coconut liners again. If you have any of these sitting around collecting dust in your garage, give them new life with these inexpensive do-it-yourself replacement wire basket liners.
Have you figured out a cheap alternative to coconut liners too? Tell me about it in the comments below.
Verbena says
I agree. Looking for something more permanent. Maybe something that you can line the coco liner with to make it permanent. Not paying ten dollars on new liners every season. Crazy…and what a racket!
Amy Andrychowicz says
Yes, it is crazy. That’s why I came up with this alternative. I don’t know what you could do to make the coco liners permanent though. The birds tear them apart here in the spring, they love them. That’s why I switched to using the fabric. I’ve had it in my wire basket planters for almost 10 years now, and it’s still working great.
Barbara bowman says
You can buy the coco liners at Dollar Tree.
Jan says
Call me crazy…but do you use the wire in one place to get it started? And do you cut the fabric or do you wrap around the planter?
Amy Andrychowicz says
I used wire to hold the landscaping fabric in place at a few different spots around each basket. The fabric liners are on the inside of the baskets, not wrapped around the outside.
Heidi A Newman says
I am in Minnesota also, you don’t bring your succulents in the house in the winter? This will be my first year planting two baskets with them and assumed I would have to bring them inside.
Amy Andrychowicz says
The ones I have growing in this wire basket planter are hardy perennials. I bring it into my garage, so they (mostly) survive the winter in there.
Dr Douglas Timbie says
Good idea with the landscaping fabric instead of the cocoa husk. My experience is the planters dry out very rapidly during the warm summer months. My solution was to add additional lining of back plastic inside the liner and then put a couple of drain holes in the plastic so excess water does not accumulate and drown the plants. This slows the rate of evaporation.
Amy Andrychowicz says
Great idea to line the baskets with plastic on the inside of the liners. That will definitely help to keep the soil from drying out so quickly.
Verbena says
I agree that, although coco liners are touted as better for dehydration, they instead do the opposite.
kay lovin says
I have an old hammock that my grand daughter was going to throw away.It had a few tears in it but otherwise was ok.It also still had a pretty color.I then used the ropes at the end of the hammock to tie the cloth to the rim of the wire basket at the top after punching holes in the cloth.
Amy Andrychowicz says
Wow, that is ingenious! Did you use it to line one wire planter basket, or did you cut it up and use it for a bunch of them? I love your creativity.
Kay Lovin says
I rolled the rest of the hammock up for later use .I,m sure i will find more uses for it maybe on the porch where i hung the planter.It will match the planter.
Amy Andrychowicz says
Awesome, love your creativity! 🙂
LouLou says
So glad I found your website a few weeks ago. I was sick to death of coco liners, not only due to the cost, (and birds picking it apart all summer), but also the time it took me to create a nice-looking basket.
You see, my 2 wire baskets are “half-rounds”, with the flat side fitting right up against my porch deck. Because of that, I’d buy coco liners for full round baskets, but then had to cut it, then rearrange so that the cuts weren’t so noticeable. I had to buy 2 coco liners in order to fit each half-round basket, so that meant I had to buy 4 liners, every spring. It literally took more than 2 hours, to create each basket. Such a pain!!
Now onto your very sage advice in your article… First, I adopted your idea for using landscape fabric, but instead used burlap, as I had plenty of it.
It looked OK, but just wasn’t ideal. And, it took a lot of time to get it to fit adequately,, more time than I’d wanted to spend on it.
Then today, I decided I’d splurge on some landscaping fabric… And I’m SO glad I did! Not only do my baskets look way better with landscaping fabric versus burlap, the best thing is this: it took only 15 minutes to create one half-round basket! I was thrilled about that!!
Although I didn’t use wire as you did, to attach the landscaping fabric to the basket (an excellent idea, BTW), I hit upon a idea that worked, and was really quick.
I used 1 extra-long rubber band, on each basket, and placed it around and under the top edge of each basket, and tucked the landscaping fabric underneath the rubber band. This worked great. (I bought the rubber bands at Walmart for less than $2. The extra-long bands are 7″ and above. I use these for many home projects.
Anyway, thank you!! Your idea saved me $$, plus time!
Amy Andrychowicz says
Wonderful!! I’m so glad to hear the landscaping fabric worked so well for you, and made it quick to line your wire baskets! The best part is that it should last you for years now, so you shouldn’t need to reline them for a long time! 🙂 Enjoy!
KEVIN LUZADER says
Great idea. I was just looking at liners and ended up looking here. I have a new roll of fabric I was going to give to my neighbor. Not now as this is a no cost solution for me. Thanks
Amy Andrychowicz says
You’re welcome! Glad to hear you found a use for your landscaping fabric! 😉
Marge Sakelik says
I use left over Sunbrella out door fabric to line my baskets, basically same idea. Had some from making pillows, jungle print, now my baskets match.
Amy Andrychowicz says
Great idea using cute outdoor fabric to line your wire baskets. Sounds so cute!
Mary Gilroy says
Thanks for the information. I have a 36″ planter x 36″ high, that I really like, and a groundhog eats the coco liner every year. So will use burlap, followed by landscape fabric, and line all with plastic, with holes in it. Coco liners have gotten very expensive – really happy to find this site!
Amy Andrychowicz says
Sounds like a great plan to replace your coconut liners! Crazy that the groundhog eats it, LOL!
Madeline says
Great ideas! Now I’m thinking I could buy remnant fabrics, or use old T-shirts instead = reuse / upcycle too.
I laughed at the comment [above] about how the liners are sometimes more expensive than the baskets.
Amy Andrychowicz says
Great ideas for alternatives to coconut liners! 🙂
Carolyn says
I have used a t-shirt in my hanging baskets before… works great!
Marc Roberts says
WONDERFUL!!! After stops at 5 different garden centres, and still nothing to fit what I need, my wife mentioned some burlap in her fabric pile. I’m gonna give them both a shot. Have the flowers, more baskets than I can think of, all because I can’t find the liners.
Great blog by the way. Flowers here I come. Oh and for those that notice, “centre is spelled correctly” I’m Canadian lol.
Amy Andrychowicz says
Awesome, so glad this helped you and that you’ll be able to use all those wire planters now with your DIY plant liners. 🙂 Have fun. And thanks for your nice comment about my blog. 🙂
Debbie Propeck says
What a fantastic idea! I was just telling my husband that I wasn’t going to do my hanging planters or stands this year because they all needed the coconut liners replaced.? I was looking at around 100.00 + yikes! That’s just crazy. Well I’m so glad I didn’t miss this because I have a 50′ roll that I had no idea what to do with woohoo I do now! Thanks again for such an awesome idea it’s going to be 95+ here for the next 3days so this will be the perfect project for my indoor potting station. ? Have a super weekend!
Amy Andrychowicz says
Yeah! So glad to hear that you will be able to use your wire hanging baskets and planters after all! The coconut liners are pretty, but so darn expensive. Have fun and I hope the landscaping fabric alternative works great for you!
Karen M Biederbeck says
I line my wire baskets with moss collected in the forest when my husband and I go for a walk. You can then place your bird-torn coconut liner in it or now use this great idea of the landscape fabric! Moss can also be added over the dirt and around new plants as they grow to keep the moisture more consistent. It can be left on or removed after the plants fill in. Thanks for the landscape fabric idea – love it!
Amy Andrychowicz says
You’re welcome! And thanks for your tip about the moss. It’s funny, because moss has naturally started growing on the outside of one of my liners, and I was just thinking that I wish it would grow over the whole thing. That would be beautiful!
Jan says
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I have quite a few planters with coconut fiber that need to be replaced, but I really didn’t want to continue replacing them at $13 each. I just happen to have landscaping fabric in my garage, so I’m headed off to do them now.
Amy Andrychowicz says
Awesome, glad I could help! Hope the landscaping fabric works for you as well as it has worked for me. 🙂
Lannette A. says
when i use zip ties or wire to tie onto baskets, etc. i go to dollar tree and get the rolls of thin rope that is in crafts or by the duct tape is where ours is located and i tie little bows over each zip tie. Time consuming ,but cute.
Amy Andrychowicz says
That sounds super cute, thanks for sharing that tip about dressing up your wire baskets!
Rebecca Jones says
Just had a thought after reading some comments here. I poke holes in my coconut liners for side planting. Using the burlap and landscape liner as well might make this more substantial and stronger. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.
Amy Andrychowicz says
That sounds like a really cute idea for your planters.