In Vancouver the rain comes back in September, and houseplants start moving indoors again. You can walk into our shop in Kitsilano and see a whole floor of unique plant pots. Your plant can go into the one you choose before you carry it out the door.
So this is a short guide to three things. Where to find unique plant pots in Vancouver. How to tell whether one suits the plant you already own. And what we do for you at the counter.
People tell us the same thing at the counter every week. They went to three or four places, and the pots all looked the same. Same shapes. Same two or three glazes. They drove home with nothing in the back of the car. One person used the word boring, and it was not meant as a dig at anybody. She was being accurate about the day she had just spent.
Why do plant pots at the big stores all look the same?
Because one buying team picks one range for a whole chain. The same pot has to sell in Calgary, in Halifax and here on the coast. So it ends up plain enough to work in all three. It is a sensible way to run a lot of stores at once. It is also why you keep meeting the same three shapes. Unique plant pots get harder to find than they should be.
You are not fussy for noticing it. You went to the shops that everybody recommends, and those shops all buy the same way.
Where can I find unique plant pots in Vancouver?
Ours are at 3742 W 10th Ave in Kitsilano, and they are the first thing you see when you come in. People type “where to buy premium indoor plant pots Vancouver” into a phone on the way over.
The reason they look different is not clever design. It is that Darrell and Hien go and get them. They go to Vietnam themselves, to the pottery towns around Bat Trang and Binh Duong. They walk into the workshops and the houses where the pots are made. They pick the shapes by hand, one at a time. In one of his videos Darrell was talking about the pottery. He said: “we actually go to Vietnam ourself and we handpick everything in our store.”
Darrell has worked with plants on this coast for more than 25 years. He buys pots the way he plants, by eye and in person. The Vietnamese ceramic planters on our floor were all chosen that way.
Now the honest part. Every pot in this country comes off a pallet, and ours do too. The difference is who was standing there when the pallet was filled. Ours are packed by the people who chose them, and then they come to Vancouver by sea. Our pots take longer to get here than a warehouse order, but that is also why you will not see them everywhere.
That sets the rhythm of the shop. A shape sells out, and it is gone until the next shipment lands. Nothing dramatic happens on our end, we just wait for the boat. Late September to the middle of October is our busy stretch. That is when unique plant pots leave the floor fastest. Everyone in the city brings plants indoors in the same few weeks.
If you like the story behind the clay, read about the potters of Binh Duong and the craft behind them. There is a second piece on the small handmade bonsai pots that come back with us.
How do I know a pot will suit my plant before I buy it?
Bring the plant with you, or bring a photo with your hand or a mug in the frame for scale. That one habit solves most of it. A floor of unique plant pots is no help if the one you pick is the wrong size.
Then three simple checks. Measure across the top of the pot the plant lives in now. Go 2 to 5 cm wider. Three sizes up is too much. Look for a real drainage hole in the base. And decide before you shop whether this pot lives indoors, or out in the rain on a step.
Most shapes on our floor come in a set of three sizes. So you are not choosing between one that is too small and one that swallows the plant. If you want the longer version, we wrote a guide on how to choose a pot for your plant in Vancouver. There is a separate one on small pots and mini planters for tight spaces.
One thing a screen cannot do is show you a glaze. The same pot reads warm under shop light and cool by the window, and photos flatten all of that. Darrell shows the problem in a short about why the glaze you pick on a screen is never the one you get. There is a page with a few of the glazed pots we bring back from Vietnam. You can ask us to email you from there. The colours on a screen are a rough guide, and daylight has the final say. Most of our unique plant pots look different in daylight than they do on a screen.
Which pots stay outside, and which stay indoors?
The thin decorative ones stay indoors. Some of the most delicate unique plant pots on our floor sit in that group. They are made to look good on a shelf. Soaked soil through a coastal winter will break them. Use one as a cover pot, keep the plant in its nursery pot, and lift it out to water it.
The heavier glazed pots are built for a different job. A pot can live outside here if it has a real drainage hole and sits raised off the ground. Then water runs out of the base instead of sitting under it. Working on a front step or a patio? Darrell has a short on where to buy large glazed pots in Vancouver.
There is more detail in our guide to whether ceramic pots can stay outside through a Vancouver winter. Not sure which one you are holding? Ask at the counter. We will tell you which pot is happy in the rain and which one is not.
What do unique plant pots actually change in a room?
Most people who come in for a pot are not really shopping for clay. They are trying to make a room feel better.
Many people tell us that looking up from a screen to something green is the one break their eyes get all day. We cannot prove that for you. We hear it every week. A small 2015 study found that working with plants can calm the body’s stress response, and you can read the 2015 study on indoor plants and stress yourself. Hold it lightly. Ten minutes with your hands in soil on a dark Tuesday is ten minutes away from a screen.
A healthy plant in the wrong pot still looks like something you bought last week. In the right pot it looks like it lives there.
A plant and a pot that suits it cost less than most of what people buy to lift a room. They last for years. A plant that dies in the wrong pot is the expensive version.
A room you want to come home to changes the evening. People with a little more left in them at the end of the day are easier to live with. That is not science. It is what we hear at the counter in February.
What happens after you pick a pot at DH Garden Centre in Kitsilano?
Unique plant pots are only half of what you carry out of here.
If you buy a pot from us, we repot it at the counter and the soil is on us, up to 5 litres. Here is the rest of it.
- More shapes and glazes than we have shelf for. Darrell and Hien pick them by hand in Vietnam, in Bat Trang and Binh Duong. The same pot is not sitting in every store in the country.
- The repotting takes a few minutes while you wait. In roughly 95 out of 100 plants we leave the root ball exactly as it is.
- Someone at the counter who matches the pot to your plant, your light and your space. Bring the plant, or a photo of the plant and the corner it will stand in.
- The plant goes home settled and watered, with notes on how to water it through our wet months.
- Any day we are open, 11:00 AM to 6:30 PM, and no appointment is needed.
- Pots priced fairly for what they are. You can see that on the shelf, not on a screen.
- There is no extra charge for the repotting.
Here is a short showing the repotting done at the counter, before the plant leaves the shop.
We will also tell you when your plant does not need a new pot at all. October and November are quiet months for this work, and we say so out loud. Nobody needs to leave with a bag of soil they will never use. The timing question has its own guide: when to repot houseplants in Vancouver, and when to wait.
Come and stand in front of the pots before you pick one
Photographs are useful right up to the moment you lift a pot and feel the weight of it. Then the choice makes itself. In this one, Darrell answers “where to buy plant pots in Vancouver” from the shop floor.
Our unique plant pots are at 3742 W 10th Ave in Kitsilano, open every day from 11 in the morning.
Bring the plant, or bring the photo. Bring the measurement if you have it. We will find the pot, put the plant in it, and send you home with the job already done.
If you want the care side written down first, take the free Vancouver Plant Care and Repotting Guide. It costs nothing and it arrives by email. It is written for our light and our wet months.
Looking for large ceramic indoor planters for living room corners? The sizing rules are in our piece on building a green corner in a Vancouver winter.
Frequently asked questions
Where can I buy unique plant pots in Vancouver?
At our shop, DH Garden Centre, 3742 W 10th Ave in Kitsilano. Unique plant pots are the first thing you see when you come in. They are chosen by hand in Vietnam and come to Vancouver by sea. The shapes and glazes change with each shipment, so come and look at the floor in person.
Where do I find glazed pots Kitsilano side of the city?
On West 10th Avenue, a few blocks up from the beach. We keep the heavier glazed pots where you can lift one and feel the weight. A glaze on a screen never matches the same pot in daylight. Ask at the counter which ones are built to sit outside through the rain.
Do you sell your pots online?
Our pots are sold in the shop rather than through the website. Ceramic is heavy, and heavy things travel badly on the way to you. You also want to see the real colour and feel the weight in your hands before you decide. So the honest answer is to come to Kitsilano and pick the one you want.
Can you repot my plant when I buy a pot?
Yes. Bring the plant in the pot it lives in now, choose a pot here, and we do the repotting at the counter. You wait a few minutes, we set the plant in, and it goes home finished. That way the size gets matched properly, with the plant in front of us.
Are the pots handmade?
They are made in the pottery towns around Bat Trang and Binh Duong, in workshops we visit ourselves. We do not claim every piece is fully handmade. Each one is picked by hand, and two from the same batch are never quite identical. That is also why a shape can sell out before the next shipment.
Visit us in Kitsilano
DH Garden Centre
3742 W 10th Ave, Vancouver, BC V6R 2G4 (Kitsilano)
Open daily 11:00 AM to 6:30 PM
Phone (604) 929-7335
Directions: https://www.google.com/maps/search/?api=1&query=DH+Garden+Centre+3742+W+10th+Ave+Vancouver
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dhgardencentre
