Customizing a Coco Liner to Fit a Half Circle Planter Basket

Half circle or half moon planters can be an attractive way to hang plants on a wall or fence. I have a metal framed planter in this shape hanging outside my front door and I like it very much. However, it’s always been challenging to find replacement coir/coco liners to fit it. Prefabricated coco liners are sometimes available online* and in some better garden centres for common sizes of half circle liners, but not for my size of planter.

I’ve tried a few solutions, including buying loose moss and packing it in (which kind of worked) but the best solution for my half moon planter has been to buy a slightly larger coconut fibre liner for a regular hanging basket and then modify it to fit.

 

These standard round liners* are usually easy to find at big box stores, garden centres, and online.

 

 

Customizing the liner

First, make sure the liner is slightly larger than your planter. You can always cut it down to size, but you can’t stretch it bigger!

Next, make a slice into the liner, from the edge to the centre, like you’re cutting into a cake. It will now lie flat.

 

(I know it doesn’t look like a straight cut, but that’s how a curved shape looks once it’s laid flat. I think it looks like a laughing Pac Man)

 

The next step will likely require some trial and error. So the rule is, remember that it’s easier to trim something a few times rather than trim off too much the first time and regret it.

The goal is to trim out just enough so that you can pull the two cut edges together, and then overlap them so that they eventually fit into the planter like this (overhead view):

 

 

But you don’t want to cut out so much that you end up with a gap in the liner that will let soil seep out.

So, pick up the liner and make another cut, like you’re making the second cut to slice and remove a piece of cake (said another way: look at where you made your first cut, and then take out another pie-shaped slice).

Test fit the liner into the planter in the manner that I’ll show you below, then keep taking it out and trimming off another piece of cake until it fits nicely. By the time I had my liner trimmed so that it fit my particular planter, it looked like this:

 

 

Fitting the liner in the planter basket

This is what the liner looked like as I laid it on top of the planter (notice that the cut/sliced side is at the top):

 

There aren’t pictures of this next step because I couldn’t perform the action and photograph it at the same time, but here are the written instructions:

• Grab the top left corner of the liner with your left hand and the top right corner with your right hand.
• While still holding the liner, move your hands towards each other until they meet, and then keep moving your right hand so that it slides over your left (said another way: bring the two ends together until they overlap).
• Then, hold the two edges together and push the bottom of the liner into the planter.

And here is the result if you follow those instructions:

 

The overlapping edges are at the back of the planter, against the wall.

 

You may have to take the liner out a couple times and trim another slice of cake off to get this right. And you may need to do it more than once.  Don’t worry if the liner is too tall and is spilling out over the top of that planter–at this stage that’s a good thing as it means the liner is not too small!

 

Use your hands to push the bottom of the liner to the bottom of the planter, and smooth out any bunched up liner. The goal is to make as big of a cavity as possible for soil. Once you fill the liner with soil and water it well, the weight of the soil and water will push the liner down quite a bit. If you don’t smooth it out before doing that, you could end up with some unintended voids.

 

 

Once you have the liner all smoothed out and are satisfied that it will not get pushed down any further once you add in soil, you could trim off the top edge.  However, if you want to be really sure it fits, wait, and don’t trim the top edge until you’ve filled the planter with soil and soaked it thoroughly. (I highly recommend waiting)

 

 

And that’s how you make a round liner fit a half circle planter basket!

 

*Disclosure: some of the links on this page are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.