Creating a Tiki Patio

Last year I spent and great deal of time and money on converting an area of our apartments into a Tiki Garden for myself and the rest of the residents ( I take care of the landscaping here), but the area is right next to a halfway house's back yard. While I admire the residents for getting their lives together, having 5 to 12 people all talking at once and smoking just a few feet away from dawn until well after dark, made it a less than enjoyable place to spend time. So I am concentrating on my small patio this year. The other residents will have to fend for themselves. I brought all of my tiki statues and plaques in for the winter and am not going to put them back there. I am going to put them on my own patio instead.
The Tiki Garden had lots of ground space for planting palms and bananas, but my patio is all cement, so I will have to put everything in containers and there is the rub. What do you use for planters on a Tiki Patio?. Clay and most other materials look too Mediteranian, Asian, classical or modern and bamboo planters are expensive. When I lived in Hawaii most people used plain plastic pots, but the plants were so beautiful that you never really even noticed the pots. Plants don't grow as luxuriantly here in Sacramento as they did in Hawaii and on my small patio you are going to be viewing any pot up close and personal.
So I have an idea of taking plain black plastic 5 and 15 gallon pots and dressing them up. My idea is to take tapa cloth patterns, either by downloading them from the internet or putting some of my tapa cloth into the scanner to get the images and making 8 by 11 print outs and using them to decoupage the pots, either covering them completely or painting the pots the background color of the tapa and cutting the tapa cloth images into strips and using them to make decoupage bands. Of course they would need a lot of clear coat to stand up to watering, but I am hoping this will work. Has anyone ever done anything like this? If so I would appreciate their imput.

Yes, I agree that a tapas pattern would be a good way to decorate the pots. I'm not sure how practical this would be - but maybe instead of actually decorating the pots themselves, you could create "wraps" to go around the pots. Their circumference could be slightly larger that the pots, so they don't actually touch the pots. That way you wouldn't have to worry about moisture messing up the design. Just a thought.

You also have to think about fading - most printer ink will only survive for a day or two in direct sunlight before fading, and in a month or two it will be back to white paper! An option would be to get photo prints done (costco is cheap, and you can send them the images online and pick them up at the store). Photo prints would stand up to the weather better (and wouldn't bee too pricey).

VanTiki

not all inks will fade. if you use a solvent based ink, it is uv safe. a sign shop might have a large format printer set up with uv inks. check around your area. these usually run about $8-9/sq ft. some larger sign shops, that make billboards, are cheaper on the vinyl material that they print the faces with. the resolution is much lower, though.

If your local Home Depot or Lowe's has the reed fencing, you can wrap that around your pots. Hot glue gun, raffia or twine, reed fencing, lots of patience and sharp tools. And, the reed ages to a nice silver after a while. You could probably do all of your pots with one run of the fence stuff.

Not as nice as your tapa print idea, but definitely weather resistant....

Part of your answer could be to get creative and mix in some non-traditional planters. For instance, I had a resin tiki that fell over and the top part broke off in many ugly pieces. I sawed the top off even and am now in the process of turning it into a planter. Another trick I use is to hide pots with large rocks (about a foot in diameter). If they are exposed to the rain, the rocks will eventually get a nice covering of moss, which makes them look old (that's good!). Something else I have done is to put a pot of vines (like English Ivy) near some other pots. As the vines grow and become dense, weave them around the other pots to semi-hide them.

Thanks for all of the suggestions. On another site it was suggested that cloth would hold up better than paper and old Hawaiian shirts could be cut up and made into bands and glued to the pots and then coated with clear coat. But I would prefer tapa cloth designs. I have also had the idea of getting a plastic shower curtain in a tapa cloth design and cutting it into bands and gluing them to the pots. All i need to do is find a tapa cloth design shower curtian LOL. So far I have not done anything except buy some new hibiscus plants and move them into larger plastic pots and move my bird of paradise into a larger pot. If the expence was not an issue, I would buy baskets or bamboo planters for all of the plants and clear coat them several times, but this has been a terrible year financialy, so the plants may have to stay in black plastic containers this year.

I'm a landscape architect and I have a couple of ideas for you. We were in the same situation and here is what I did. Last year and again earlier this year, Costco had some very inexpensive "clay looking" resin pots. I liked them because they were large enough to put a patio tree in, were thick enough they wouldn't split if the wind blew them over and light enough you could pick them up and move them around very easily when they were empty. My suggestion would be to buy a pot with a diameter that is at least a foot wider than the root ball of the plant you will be putting in the pot. This gives the root system room to grow and you won't have to replace your plant as quickly. The other thing you can then do is plant some tropical trailing ground cover type plants in 4" containers up 1 gallon size around the perimeter of the pot so that as they grow, they will trail over the side of the pot and then you won't see it. You can also place your tiki statues around the base of the pots to cover them up. And then you can also paint the pots to resemble a bamboo pattern or somthing else. You might even look at using a bench in front of the pots and then adding some flower boxes on it to help hide the pots. I like the idea of a wood or bamboo mat that you could wrap around the pots, but cost might be an issue there. Anyway, those are just a few ideas and I hope those help. Let me know if you need any more ideas and by all means, post a few pics of your patio when it is finished!

Thanks. I was a landscaper too, although I am retired now. I hung my tiki masks, from Island Madness and the Tiki garden sign that I made last year on the walls of the patio and moved three tiki torches out there and now I am less concerned about the pots. Most of my plants are doing great(although it has just hit 100 degrees for the first time this year and that may stress some of them). I have two 50 gallon plastic trash cans that have large plants in them, a mimosa tree in one and a large brugmansia in the other. I painted them South Seas blue, four years ago when I put the plants in them, but now they are cracking and peeling. They were a major concern to me, but I came up with the same idea, put potted trailing plants in them and let the trailing plants cover most of the peeled areas. The peeling is mostly around the lip anyway. I am going to use star jasmine, since it grows well in sun and shade, gives great fragrance in April,May and June and is evergreen and will cover the spotty paint all the time. As for the smaller pots, I may try my hand at painting eventually, using my tapa cloth as a guide, maybe just doing a 6 inch or 1 gallon pot first and working up from there.
I spilled white primer on the concrete floor of the patio 4 years ago when I was painting the trash cans and have never been able to get rid of it. I was planning on painting the whole floor to cover it, but have decided to put some coco fiber door mats over the spots for this year. It is too hot during the day to paint out there now. LOL
The only other thing that bugs me is a blank wall. I am looking for a bamboo trellis to put on it, but Target has sold out of most of the tiki stuff they had earlier in the year so I don't know where to get it now. If I can't find what I want I will do as I have in the past and make a trellis out of twine on nails in the wall and plant morning glory and moon flowers on it.
Anyway thanks to everyone for their suggestions and input.