What do you do with all of those vases piling up under the sink or on a forgotten shelf somewhere? Even after filling your favorites with fresh flowers to display around the house, that cluttered storage space still holds vases left over from long-ago gifted flowers or purchases you made yourself. It’s time to free up that space and give those abandoned vases new life!
Gift Fresh Flowers from your Garden
Garden-fresh flowers make wonderful heartfelt gifts for any occasion, and if you have too many vases lying around, what you actually have is plenty of gifts waiting to be assembled!
Gift vases filled with flowers from your garden to friends and family celebrating birthdays or recovering from illness, offer them as decorations for your place of worship, give them as hostess gifts, or even take them to work for your coworkers to enjoy or gift to their loved ones.
Here are the best flowers to plant for a cut flower garden.
Donate Extra Vases
Donating to a thrift shop is perhaps the easiest way to get rid of unwanted vases, but there are many other places that might appreciate them too.
Hospitals, nursing homes, and other care facilities often appreciate having vases on hand for when people bring in bouquets with no vase. Local schools, especially those with Future Farmers of America programs, may also take vases for students to practice flower arranging.
Give Vases to Local Flower Shops
Many florists will accept clean, like-new vases, and they might even give you free or discounted flowers in exchange! In addition to flower shops, check with U-pick flower farms or flower vendors at the farmers market to see if they could use your extra vases. Remember to wash the vases first, or you might not find any takers.
Make Whimsical Glass Mushrooms
For a fun, simple craft idea, make a few whimsical glass mushrooms to decorate your garden, set among your house plants, or give as gifts. All you need to do is glue a bowl (the mushroom cap) upside-down onto a vase (the stem), and you have a mushroom! It can be displayed as-is, or you can paint it as you like.
Display Those Beautiful Vases
Why do we keep beautiful, unused vases tucked away in cabinets? Especially if you have some family heirloom vases, consider storing them visibly so they can be appreciated. Add some interest to a bookshelf with a few vases here and there, place glass vases of varying colors by a window to catch the light, or display the full collection on a shelf like fine china.
Fill With Dried or Artificial Flowers
If you don’t want to display empty vases but like the idea of enjoying them year-round, fill them with artificial flowers or dried bouquets when there are no fresh flowers blooming in the garden. You could also combine this idea with some of the previous ones and gift or donate extra vases filled with dried or artificial flowers.
Lavender flowers dry really well and last for a ling time (the ones in my vases are from 4 years ago when I planted my 300 lavender plants). I wrote a book about my experience planting so much lavender. Take a peek here.
Propagate New Plants
Propagating plants in repurposed jars and bottles is great, but what if you used some of those beautiful vases just gathering dust? Just think how beautiful your windowsill would be! If you’ve never propagated plants before, pothos is one of the easiest plants to start in water. Be careful, though: once you start propagating, you might soon find yourself running out of windowsill space — and maybe even vases!
Learn more about propagating plants from cuttings.
