Engaging Your Green Thumb with Italian Ceramic Planters

The grass is growing, the flowers are blooming, and hopefully you’re not sneezing — after all, the most colorful time of the year is best appreciated without tears in one’s eyes (unless it’s because you’re overwhelmed by all that seasonal beauty!) 

If your home and/or garden are still lacking a little brightness, a handcrafted Italian ceramic planter or vase may be just the thing you need to bring your decor up a notch. Whether you’re a gardening greenhorn or an experienced green thumb, potting your plants in authentic Italian majolica is a sure way to make your houseguests green with envy. 

The brilliant colors and designs of the Italian ceramic tradition are produced through a centuries-old process that has become synonymous with majolica. After the object is shaped and fired in the kiln, a mineral oxide base is applied to the cooled form and allowed to dry — this base layer gives the artist a clean white canvas to paint on with an assortment of colored glazes. Once painted, the object is fired again at a lower temperature over a longer period to permanently lock in the design.

Choosing an Italian ceramic planter

The size and shape of the Italian pottery planter you’ll choose ultimately comes down to two things.

1. What you’re planting

Bellezza’s smallest pots measure just 15 centimeters (about 6 inches) across, making them good candidates for small herbs or flowers. A majority of our majolica planters measure 33 centimeters (approximately 13 inches) across, while our largest are 40 centimeters (roughly 15.7 inches) in diameter. 

Some popular uses aside from, of course, potting flowers:

• Small planters - herbs, orchids, any 6" plant
• Small & medium planters - centerpiece arrangements for table settings & buffets
• Medium planters - office or bathroom wastebasket
• Large planters -  lemon trees & other large indoor trees

2. Where it's going 

If you’re approaching this from less of a horticulturist and more of a decorator’s perspective, our smaller majolica planters look great on a windowsill, countertop, or table. Medium and larger planters are best reserved for a bench or the floor — perhaps a sunroom or patio.

Decorating with majolica planters

Color and pattern are a matter of personal preference — our Limoni footed planters showcase the lemon’s eye-catching yellows; our Ricco Deruta planters also stun with one of Deruta pottery’s most iconic designs. For a more subtle kind of gorgeous, you might go with one of our monochrome Tuscan planters, available in white, honey, or turquoise colors. A mildly antiqued/distressed effect on the rims and handles will inflect your patio with the air of a stately Mediterranean courtyard. 

Here at Bellezza, we fully endorse mixing it up! A blend of patterns and shapes can work masterfully in the right context. Take cues from the room or surrounding space — artwork, decorations, colors, and textures — and visualize how your new Italian planter pot would play together with these elements. 

Of course, the plant itself might also inform that decision — you might try matching the color of the planter’s ceramic glaze to a flowering blossom or even plant the same thing depicted in the pattern!

Caring for your Italian planter pot

Italian planter pots make lovely and resilient homes for both indoor and outdoor plants, standing up well to sun and rain (that glaze won’t wash or fade!) — however, they do not fare well in ice and snow. In colder climates, we recommend bringing pots inside at first frost. 

Also bear in mind that our majolica planters are made without drainage holes. While this does wonders in protecting carpets and floors indoors (i.e water can’t leak out the bottom), proper drainage is nonetheless imperative to the health of the roots. This is why we suggest employing your Italian ceramic planter as part of a cachepot system. 

In a cachepot system, an inner “grow pot” (i.e. one that is water permeable) is placed within an outer decorative receptacle — in our case, the Italian ceramic planter — with a saucer to collect excess water.  Depending on the height of the receptacle, you might add risers to bring the grow pot closer to the lip of the ornamental pot. Top-dressings such as moss, gravel, or palm fiber can be used to conceal the edges and sides of the grow pot.

Gardening with Bellezza

If you are looking to coltivare il giardino brilliantly and beautifully, look no further than Bellezza! We hope your plant enjoys and thrives in its new home. 

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