How to Make a Plant Stand (Upcycled Drawer)

How to make a plant stand with a bottom shelf from an old upcycled drawer and pallet wood. This woodworking project for beginners requires minimal tools.

This week, I finally get to share the rustic plant stand that I created for ITV's Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh. And I love how it's a cheap DIY plant stand that cost me absolutely nothing.

All you need is an old drawer and some spare pallet wood, which I'm sure you can source from somewhere. But if you're looking for a DIY modern plant stand instead, you could take this idea and make it from planed wood instead.

I'll also talk you through alternative methods of making a frame. Or, how you could make a DIY A frame plant stand. It doesn't need to be square.

Things I Used to Make an Easy DIY Plant Stand

• An old drawer or recycle old dresser drawers to make a DIY tiered plant stand
• Pallet wood (see cutting list below)
• Hand saw or mitre saw
• Combi drill
• Pocket hole jig
• Pocket hole screws
• Clamps
• Wood glue - weatherproof if making a DIY outdoor plant stand
• Tape measure
• Speed square
• Orbital sander if you want to take the roughness out of the pallet wood.

Alternative Tools

If you don't have a pocket hole jig, you could instead use a biscuit joiner as I did in my DIY wooden radiator covers tutorial. However, pocket hole jigs are SO easy to use and there are many cheap ones on the market.

Free Plans to Make Plant Stand

Firstly, although some of you know I'm stating the obvious here, your measurements all depend on the size of the drawer you're repurposing. However, above you'll find my free plans with a cutting list.

I chose the depth of a drawer to be the same (or slightly bigger) as the width of my plant stand frame's width. But as you can see, it's very straight forward with lots of repetitive cuts.

And I've designed it with three strips for a plant stand shelf as you can never underestimate the need for gardening storage. Also, I've designed this to be a wooden indoor plant stand. If you wanted to use it outdoors, then simply treat the pallet wood and the drawer sides.

Alternative Z Frame Shelf

Another idea I've designed since, is a DIY trolley cart with a Z shelf frame. This would work great providing you stick to small drawers. For larger ones, you'll need extra supports.

Other Ways to Adapt this Upcycled Plant Stand

• Add castor wheels on the feet of the frame to create a DIY rolling plant stand
• Biscuit join finer wood if you don't want to make a pallet plant stand
• Make a DIY tall plant stand with several drawers. This is perfect as a DIT dresser drawer planter
• Design a painted plant stand to match your house or garden's colour scheme
• You could mitre all of your side frame's cuts to create an A frame plant stand
• Or two mitred side sections (which I almost did for the TV), to create a ladder plant stand

How to Make Drawers into Planters

OK, so now you know my cutting list, I'm starting with my 4 longest pallet wood strips.

I laid them on the floor, all inline with each other so I could mark where my 15cm support strips would go.

While inline, I used a speed square to ensure my transfer my marks all in the same place.

Making Pocket Holes

Above, you can see I'm drilling two pocket holes per end on the:

• 15cm supports and
• 33cm shelf strips
• Don't put them on the 65cm strips

If a pocket hole is new to you, what it does is pre drill holes in a diagonal. Now, I use a Trend pocket hole jig because it's SO easy to use. No, this isn't sponsored, but I paid a bit more for convenience.

All you need to do is set it up the pocket hole's drill bits collar once as seen in my pine wood coffee table DIY. And there's no need after that for any other future projects.

Screwing the DIY Pallet Plant Stand Frame Together

Something I do advise while using a pocket hole jig is, always use wood glue for your joins too. And depending on what project you're making and what pressure the joins will endure, sometimes they can be weak.

However, it'll help you make a DIY easy plant stand you can be proud of in 30 minutes. Particularly if you're a woodworking beginner.

You can buy pocket hole jig clamps, but they're a bit too dear for me to digest. And yes, this pocket hole jig comes with one, but I'm not a fan of it (yet).

Now to Build a Plant Stand

Next, is the fun part! Building a plant by screwing everything together. It's completely your choice where you want to screw your drawer to the plant stand frame.

I left a few centimetres gap between the top of the drawer and the bottom of the top 15cm support. But it also depends on what you want to store on your plant stand shelf.

To attach, simply screw it from the inside of the drawer using screws and a combi drill or impact driver. Note, there's no need to pre-drill here screw holes here as I'm not screwing towards an end where it could split the wood.

Screwing on a Pallet Plant Shelf

After marking where I wanted my pallet plant shelves to go, I propped up my slats with clamps and a straight edge. In fact, I'm using offcuts, so please don't let it confuse you while it's upside down.

Above, I'm making a large outdoor plant stand for the TV show. But, for my small indoor plant stand, I temporarily screwed offcuts instead.

Or, you could ask someone to hold the shelves for you.

Then I glued and screwed my plant stand shelves with more glue and pocket hole screws.

Tips for Using Pocket Hole Screws

• You'll need to set your combi drill on a low torque setting, which you'll find is a number usually between 1 and 18. I find my sweet spot is usually 8.
• The heads on pocket hole screws aren't typical. You'll need a square head.
• Screw it together where the pocket holes won't be seen. Ie, that's why I'm screwing the slats while my DIY plant stand is upside down.

Alternative Screw Method

If, for example, you've chosen to use a biscuit joiner for your main frame build, then for your shelves, you could screw from the outside with normal screws.

Drill Drainage Holes

An important part of turning old drawers into planters is making sure your plants have good drainage. So above, I drilled several holes in the bottom of the drawer.

Also, it may seem silly, but you also need to be mindful about what you're storing on your bottom shelf. So, make sure there's something that won't get water damage.

This also means no books like in my picture(!) Sorry.... I couldn't resist. It looked too pretty.

What Planter Box Liners Can I Use?

The drawer planter DIY fabric liner I used here and for the show, which got Alan Titchmarsh's approval was a hessian sack. However, there are other things you can use for upcycled drawers:

• Plastic liner for planter box, such as a a builder's sheet
• Landscaping fabric, which naturally offers draining with its weave
• A woven shopping bag as I did in my offcut planter box
• Or design it with several slats on the base instead

Will the base on any Old Drawers as Planters Rot?

It's a well known fact that wood and water don't go well together unless treated. You could look for a plant friendly wood preserve, but I'm not sure any exist.

However, replacing the base after time is an easy fix. I would attach a new base with panel pins from underneath. If you've made a large DIY plant stand, you may want to add slats later instead.

You can also see how to paint a wooden plant stand here if using indoors.

Now you know how to make a drawer garden planter, you may also like to read how I turned a drawer into an insect hotel.

As you'll soon discover in that tutorial, is that this drawer came from a very tatty 3 drawer dresser.

So watch this space to see what I did with the last drawer and the dresser drawer body. And, it also explains how I upcycled the drawer knobs.

2021 Update

I've since dismantled this demonstration piece to use the side supports for a DIY PPE storage drawer.

Pin Upcycled Planters from Old Drawers

More Easy Upcycling Projects You Might Like

• Make a simple mud kitchen by re-purposing old drawers
• How to restore oak furniture easily
• My quick and easy secrets to painting furniture
• Repainting a rusty washing machine
• Making a kitchen recycling bins cupboard out of offcuts
• How to recycle an old roller blind
• DIY Pallet wood headboard
• Whitewashing wood tutorial