Disney-It-Yourself: WALL-E's Junk Garden Rain Boot Planters

Put on your gardening clothes, there’s a brand new craft right here…

Inspired by WALL-E’s little sprout in an old boot, I turned my old Wellies, which are cracked and splitting, into flower planters!

They’re perfect for a junk garden, which is a garden filled with things otherwise destined for the trash bin repurposed as pots, planters, garden ornaments, trellises, etc. It just may help delay the world turning into the giant desolate trash heap WALL-E inhabits, too…

I’ve been planning to do this craft for a few days, but we had a bout of rain, so I had to wait for the weather to cooperate. I’m so happy with how they turned out; they look so charming and were pretty simple to make!

All you need is:

An old pair of rain boots
Potting soil
A trowel
A drill with a 3/8” bit
Some annual flowers

I planted pink periwinkles, a.k.a. vincas.

Here's what to do:

1. If there are insoles in the boots, then remove them.

2. Put one of the boots over something that won’t be ruined by the drill (or ruin your drill either, for that matter). I just put mine on the ground, so the drill bit will go into the dirt once it’s through the boot sole.

3. Reach the drill down into the boot and drill a couple holes. It doesn’t have to go all the way through the sole yet. The drill should loosen up the fabric lining. Reach down into the toe area and peel the lining out of the boot. This will make it easier to drill through the soles because the drill won't keep getting caught in the fabric.

4. Now drill 5-10 holes all the way through the sole of the boot. Try to get a couple holes as close to the toes as possible, so not all the holes are clustered together in the heel.

5. Repeat this with the other boot. The holes are there to drain out excess water.

6. Now, just fill the boots with potting soil up to about 5 inches below the top edge. Make sure to get dirt down in the toes.

7. Take the flowers out of the plastic containers they came in and loosen the soil around the bottom of the roots a bit (shown on the left). Put the flowers down in each boot so the base of the plant is about half an inch to an inch below the boot’s top edge. Fill in around the plants with more potting soil and pat down the dirt (done in the right boot).