A Vintage Inspired DIY Propagation Station That’s Beautiful and Functional

This DIY propagation station is customizable and so easy to make. Keep your plant addiction thriving and beautiful all at the same time!

A brief history

This year I discovered the joy of houseplants. I’ve been veggie gardening for 3 summers now and I love it so much. Something about growing the food you eat is so incredible to me! But I’ve never really been in to flower gardening or houseplants until just recently.

I have very distinct memories of receiving houseplants or hanging flower baskets for holidays and immediately forgetting about them for weeks at a time until they were crispy messes on my back deck. Then, as a total impulse buy mid-2020, I picked up a tiny fiddle leaf fig tree at Aldi. Its a notoriously finnicky plant, but I just went for it. I named him Frankie Figs (IYKYK) and he just celebrated his 3rd birthday.

Fast forward to today, and my office is slowly transforming into a jungle. I’m obsessed. There is still a ton to learn and I have killed a small hand full of innocent plants. But every day I come in to my office and look at all my plants and cheer them on as they push out new leaves.

I propagated my first plant in May. I was at my in-law’s house for a Memorial Day BBQ and she had a giant golden pothos in the kitchen. With her permission, I snipped off a few leaves for myself and that was how I dove into propagation. Again – zero thought behind it, just right in to the deep end.

I now have a small collection of plants I’m propagating, so I decided to build a little propagation station for them. There are tons of these available online, but I wanted something a little more custom than the standard test tube look.

The inspiration

My aesthetic has been slowly shifting lately from stark minimalism to a slightly more lived-in minimalism. Our home is still very much a neutral paradise, but I’m letting a little more texture and pattern creep in. When I was looking for a propagation station to simply purchase, they all seemed either way to kitschy/boho for my taste or too science experiment-y.

Pinterest is always my go-to when looking for inspiration, so I headed there to see if there was an alternative look that suited me better. I found a few that were more my style but still nothing I really wanted to add to cart. That’s when I realized I could probably just make my own and mash up the bits I liked from multiple propagation stations I saw!

There were a few that used vintage-looking bottles, and a few with cool shelf styles, so I got to work designing something that incorporated those 2 elements.

The supplies

I am a huge fan of utilizing things I already have lying around the house to complete projects like this. Luckily, this project doesn’t really require a ton of materials to build. Here’s what I used:

• 3/4″ finish grade plywood (pine board would work nicely as well)
• jigsaw
• clamps
• table saw (optional)
• wood glue
• palm sander (sand paper would also work fine)
• drill
• wood stain
• vintage inspired bottles
• screws and picture hangers

Build it

First thing’s first: you have to pick a shape for your back piece. I wanted to keep mine fairly simple, so I took a 4″ plant pot and traced out some overlapping circles on a pizza box. I connected the 2 circles with a straight line and ta da! Design complete. Of course you can make this as simple or complex as you like! But for this particular project I wanted the bottles to be the focal point.

Next, you’ll need to design the part of the shelf that holds the bottle. Instead of just making a shelf and placing the bottle there, I wanted to be able to secure it so that if the plant I’m propagating is bigger or heavier, I don’t have to worry about the bottle falling over. I followed the same design technique and rounded out the front edge. I measured the diameter of the neck of the bottle and made an opening to fit that. Important: this shelf style will ONLY work with a bottle that has a lipped opening. Test tubes will slip right through!

This next step can probably be optional, but I wanted these shelves to be stable and strong… so builder beware I guess. If you have a router – lucky! Use one to make a notch in the backer piece that will tightly fit the shelf. I used a table saw. Lower the blade to just shy of half way through the wood, then make cuts close together to create the same channel mentioned above. This will take some careful measuring, so go slowly and check your width frequently. I ended up chiseling out some rough pieces just to get the channel nice and flat. Again – this is some over engineering on my behalf but now I can confidently hang the bottles without worrying if the shelf will break.

Once I had all my pieces traced and notches prepped, I took my jigsaw and got to cutting. Make sure the wood you’re cutting is tightly secured (via clamp, etc) to an immovable object. Take your time making the cuts – there’s no prize for speed.

I used a drill for the bottle neck portion. It was a tight turn and I didn’t want to risk it with the jigsaw. Depending on the width of your bottles (and supplies you have), this may or may not be an unnecessary step.

Once all your pieces are cut, it’s time to sand them! I actually went out and bought this Ryobi sander to speed the process up because I am a notoriously impatient crafter and will rush through important steps just to see the final product. This helped tremendously and did a much better job than I would have by hand.

Make sure you do dry fits of your pieces as you progress through the project. Don’t sand too much away from any of the sides to ensure your shelf pieces look as seamless as possible!

The room I had these shelves in mind for was my office (aka my jungle) and the walls are a cool green. I initially bought a grey-toned stain for the wood but after trying a test patch my husband mentioned they might not stand out against the green like I was hoping. So, back to Home Depot I went and picked out a deeper mahogany stain. I stained all the pieces before assembly to make sure every visible piece was sufficiently covered.

After all the pieces were dry, I added gorilla glue to secure the shelves in their channels. I also used some screws for some extra security.

Once the glue was dry, I attached the picture hangers. In hindsight, this may have been easier to do before the shelves went on, so do what works better for you. Because I did them after the shelves, I just laid the back piece on a table with the shelf hanging off the end so it could lay flat while I nailed in the hanger.

The results

This project was so fun to make and now I have even more reasons to keep plant shopping! The bottles were such a good find and they look so nice against the dark stain. I couldn’t wait to fill them with little cuttings and have plans to make a bunch more for this wall.

Did this inspire you to make your own propagation station? I’d love to hear about your design in the comments!