Hanging baskets full of glorious plants can provide a beautiful entrance to your home or brighten up a dull corner of the patio.
Think of hanging baskets when considering how to brighten up a porch, balcony, decking, verandah or blank wall. Various shapes can be achieved by the container and plant selection, and many plants can be put together in pleasing combinations in your hanging basket.
When planting hanging baskets you are faced with an endless range of color, texture, shapes and sizes of plants to choose from, although the size must necessarily be kept within the bounds of the basket size and the weight that the rafter can bear.
Use your imagination when deciding where to put your beautiful hanging baskets 
. They can be hung from the eaves of your house, in a gazebo or pergola, on branches of trees, from a hanging basket stand, a garden arch or even inside the house, greenhouse or shade house hanging from the roof. A new innovation is the Lock-n-Load Hanger (pictured above) which can hang your favorite plants on the outside of your porch, allowing excess water and soil to drop down into the garden, as in the picture, or can hold your plants in any other convenient spot.
As well as reading books like
Colorful Hanging Baskets & Other Containers 
to get ideas, you will find hanging baskets in abundance at your local nursery, and this is where you can also get some good ideas. Just have a look around and see which plant combinations are pleasing to you. This is an individual thing, so take your time finding out what you really love. One thing to remember is that if you’re planting several plants in the same hanging basket they should all have the same cultivation needs. When you’ve decided on the plants you want, go home and
plant up your very own hanging basket.
Bear in mind when selecting your plants that hanging baskets, although they can provide a wonderful showpiece for your home, can also be very difficult to keep looking good. They are often exposed to the full range of the elements, including very hot and windy weather, and they will dry out very quickly under these conditions. The beauty of hanging baskets is that it may be possible to take the baskets down and leave them in a protected area until conditions improve if you have a burst of extreme weather. Use premium potting mix that contains fertilizers, water crystals and wetting agents, as this will make a big difference to the quality of your finished hanging basket.
If you hang the baskets too high, you will have problems with watering, feeding and inspecting the plants to make sure they are healthy. Eye-level of the person tending the plants is a good height unless you use a Rain Stick water system which will extend the height at which you can water the plants. Liquid fertilizer can be used with the water, so you will then only have to remember to inspect the plants to ensure they are healthy.
Hanging baskets need watering every single day, and with so much watering a lot of nutrients are going to be lost.
Time release food 
is going to have to be applied regularly, as well as liquid plant food.
For the amount of effort put into establishing and maintaining your hanging baskets, you will be repaid many times over by the sheer pleasure you will derive from these bundles of joy called hanging baskets.
