My husband is the plant person in this house. I like them well enough, but I mostly leave him to it. So when one of his Monsteras outgrew its pot, I was the one who went looking for a bigger one, more out of necessity than enthusiasm.
What I found first was a lot of terracotta. Perfectly nice, perfectly traditional, and not remotely what I wanted. I kept looking until I found Pow Pots, and it was the opposite of everything else on offer. Modern, colourful, and nothing like the plain pots I'd been scrolling past for an hour.
Why Pow Pots is different from an ordinary plant pot
Most of the colourful pots I found online still felt quite traditional underneath the paint. Pow Pots were different, bold patterns and colours that owed far more to Scandinavian design than to a cottage garden, which was exactly the gap I'd been struggling to fill.
Pow Pots is a small British business, creating hand-painted pots in a studio in the Lake District. Each pot is made from fibreclay rather than traditional terracotta, which makes it lighter and considerably tougher, and properly frostproof if you want to use it outside. Every pot is painted individually, using eco-friendly water-based paints, which means no two are ever quite identical.
What it's actually like, three or four years in
We went back and forth on colour. I loved the yellow, we both loved the zigzag pattern, and in the end the zigzag won out, in a red and white colourway called Atomic Red. We bought the medium size, with a matching saucer, on New Year's Eve 2022, and it's lived in our hallway ever since, currently home to a fully grown Monstera that's clearly very happy in it.
the Atomic Red zigzag, holding a very happy Monstera
It's a genuinely heavy, well-made object, not a flimsy plastic pot dressed up to look substantial. I'm fairly sure I've never actually cleaned it, not even a wipe, and it still looks exactly as good as the day it arrived.
The one thing worth knowing before buying
We only own the one, though we've talked more than once about getting another. Nothing's stopped us beyond not quite getting round to it, which probably says more about us than the pots. If you're tempted, know that they're made to order rather than sitting in a warehouse, so it's worth planning ahead rather than expecting it overnight.
Was it worth £97.99?
Yes, easily. For a pot and matching saucer that's had zero maintenance and still looks brand new three or four years on, that's a fair price for something built to last rather than to be replaced next spring.
The next chapter
It's coming with us to the new house, though we haven't settled on exactly where yet. The larger reception room is the current front-runner, but nothing's decided. Wherever it lands, the Monstera's coming with it.
Still worth keeping?
- Durability
- Excellent, genuinely heavy and well made, no fading or damage despite zero cleaning
- Design
- Still love the pattern and colour three or four years on, no regrets on the choice
- Would we buy another?
- Yes, we've been meaning to for a while
- Best for
- Anyone who's tired of traditional terracotta and wants something with actual personality
