Annette Goliti Gutierrez and Mary Gray are the creators and owners of Potted, a garden lifestyle boutique in Los Angeles. They met many years ago in their former lives in the film industry, where Annette was a screenwriter and former ad agency producer who procrastinated by remodeling houses and Mary was a set decorator and art director. With no retail experience, they bought a run-down pottery store, which they built over the course of a decade into a gardening destination and brand.  They recently collaborated on a book, “Potted“, which reveals how show-stopping containers can be made from everyday materials such as concrete, plastic, metal, terracotta, rope, driftwood, and fabric.  Read on to learn more and enter below to win a copy from Timber Press!

1. How does this book “boldly go where no planter has gone before”?

With Potted, we have taken on large planters”¦planters you have to plunk down real money for. Larger projects can be intimidating but our philosophy is if we can do it, so can you.

2. What skill set, budget, materials and time investment are needed to make the creations in this book?

The projects vary from very simple painting to using a skill saw but if you have any DIY bones, none of them are complicated or scary. We figured out every one of the projects ourselves through trial and error and tried to make the mistakes for you”¦but feel free to experiment and make some of your own. We were always conscious of budget and practicality and think we achieved a good balance.

3. With an infinite number of possibilities for pot design, was it really difficult deciding what made the cut?

What are some ideas that almost, but didn’t, make the cut? It was really difficult to decide. When we started we had a list of something like 75 projects. But then we began culling, deciding that smaller, indoor projects had been given their due and what we wanted to concentrate on was larger scale projects. But some of those didn’t pan out either. We really wanted to do a fence of open steel pipes with plants spilling out of the top but then we started pricing steel and went hmm, this is not cost effective in anyway at all.

4. What is your favorite pot DIY featured in this book and why?

One of our favorites projects was the Cement Tile Custom Container. Cement tile is so beautiful and colorful and just plain fun that being able to make it into a planter was something we loved doing. In fact we’ve been making them in the store and they’ve been flying out the door. I think it’s also because people really respond to the tile but don’t always have an application for it or maybe can’t afford it.

5. What was the inspiration for your designs?

Our inspiration comes from many things”¦Pinterest, magazines, Instagram, driving around and just looking at gardens”¦but the biggest inspiration we went to for this particular book was building supply stores. Since we wanted to create the projects using easily obtainable objects, we thought why not go to the mother lode of building supplies. Some of the projects literally leapt off the shelves at us like the attic vent project we called The Gables. We really couldn’t believe we’d never seen it before”¦and it was so easy.