Southern Porches And Sweet Tea

There’s something so nostalgic and romantic about southern porches. I’ve always adored the look of them and secretly longed for a house with an unending porch that I can see every nook and cranny of my yard and gardens from.

Swings, urns overflowing with flowers, bottomless glasses of icy cold sweet tea and a warm breeze that is scented with flowers.

It goes without saying that there must also be hanging baskets of lush ferns along the porch.

Now here is my problem – I don’t have a house like this.

Will I let this deter me?

Have we met?

I might not live in my dream house but that’s no reason to let my dreams completely die. I do have a porch and it’s not a bad size so I may as well make the most of it, right?

~ To begin with my porch was always covered with pockets of water from the sprinklers that lined the edges of the porch. The water didn’t drain off and has left lots of staining over the years. I solved this issue by removing the flowerbed sprinklers along the porch and installing a drip irrigation system instead. This solved the issue of the water except in major rainstorms which can’t be helped.

~ I built a bench out of an old crib last summer to add some more seating and to start defining some little “hangout” areas.

~ I painted my porch ceiling a beautiful shade of haint blue.

~ I just bought an outdoor area rug last week for the area that my rocking chairs are in and I may or may not having a hanging seat that is due to arrive within a few days. Shhhhh don’t tell my kids!

~ One of these days I may build some railings between the pillars to create a background for the flowerbeds and make the porch feel a bit more intimate. It will also (hopefully) prevent kids from running through the front yard and jumping across the flowerbeds onto the porch.

What has that got to do with southern porches and sweet tea?

Well everything and nothing, of course!

It did inspire today’s spring porch hack!

Remember how we talked about water on the porch? Well when I solved the issue with the drip irrigation, I turned around the same year and put hanging baskets of flowers along the porch for the first time. Maybe it wasn’t my finest hour. Within a very short amount of time I realized that the daily watering of the hanging baskets was not only time consuming, but most of all it resulted in a lot of water splashing all over my patio. That pretty much took me right back to square one with having to sweep off the water every day and wait for it to dry!

This year I’m much smarter!

And I’m going to get my southern porch with its beautiful hanging ferns.

How?

Let me show you!

I took my hanging baskets from last year and filled them completely with dirt.

Then I grabbed 2 faux fern picks from Hobby Lobby at 50% off. They were originally $25 each and so beautiful and full.

All I had to do was spread them out nicely, stick the stem deep into the soil in the basket and fluff it between the 3 hanging chains.

Voila!

Now I’m not sure how well these ferns would do in direct sunlight – they might fade dramatically. I don’t have to worry about this however as my porch completely shades the baskets which was actually a bit of an issue with real plants. I suspect I will need to clean them once or twice per summer but I’m perfectly okay with that.

I still have lots of plans for my front porch but I’m really happy with the direction it’s heading.

To see Emily’s spring decor idea just click on the photo below.