Elho’s Vibes plant pot can handle pretty much anything

I have semi-green fingers. In other words, flowering plants always die on me, but my green plants grow and thrive. Naturally, that means I often have to repot them. A few years ago, I discovered the Vibes plant pots from Elho and have been a fan ever since. There’s just one thing I’m slightly less keen on.

Giving my green plants a splash of colour

Non-flowering plants are, as you might expect, green. If you ask me, that gets boring after a while, so I use the pots to try and inject some colour into my otherwise predominantly grey-blue living room. Elho pots are available in dusky pink, sunny yellow, mint green, wool white or petrol blue. They have a ribbed surface, which goes wonderfully with my ribbed, glass lanterns.

The pots come in different shapes and sizes, so there’s one to fit each of my plants. My already magnificent fig tree lives in one with a 30-centimetre diameter. My little, green fern, on the other hand, has hunkered down in the «coupe» pot to gain some height. Once it’s grown, it’ll get a standard pot too. Its former home will go to a new baby plant.

Lazy cleaning

Flower pots have a habit of getting filthy. When it’s not the soil causing the mess, it’s the fusty, stagnant water pooling at the bottom of the pot. I used to laboriously scrub my porcelain and clay pots by hand. Now, I stick my Vibes in the dishwasher. Or mini dishwasher, to be exact. Since all Elho pots are made of plastic, they’re super easy to clean. You simply knock the coarsest bits of dirt off the pot, rinse it under the tap, pop it in the dishwasher and hey presto! It’s perfect for people who, like me, hate cleaning.

Planters

Elho Vibes Fold

14.10 cm

Planters

Elho Vibes Fold High

13 cm

Planters

Elho Vibes Fold

22 cm

121

Planters

Elho Vibes Fold

14.10 cm

Planters

Elho Vibes Fold High

13 cm

Planters

Elho Vibes Fold

22 cm

121

Great for indoors, outdoor use limited

According to the manufacturer, the Vibes are indoor pots. However, I also put them on my balcony. Simply because they’re almost indestructible and, in my experience, resistant to frost. The only drawback is that they’re very light. So light that they can blow away – especially when that Hamburg wind picks up. In the past, I’ve been forced to go looking for fallen mini pots in the courtyard.

With this in mind, I’d only recommend using the Vibes pots outdoors if they contain large, heavy plants, or if you’ve weighed them down with something else. Or if you live in some mystical place with zero wind.

The environmental factor

The Dutch manufacturer’s ads say that its flower pots are made from recycled plastic. Or, as the website puts it, «the beauty of waste». Elho also has a wind turbine in its backyard, meaning all its products are supposedly manufactured using «100 percent Dutch wind energy». The turbine even features in this cute little video.

I don’t know whether the wind energy generated by the company is enough to run its production process or whether they use extra power from electrical sockets. However, I wanted to mention the environmental side of things in order to give you a fuller picture.