Try your question in the hypertufa forum, they might have some ideas for you.

Have you considered a tire planter? Here's the link on the instructions. The tire gets cut & then pulled inside out, you can leave the rim on and have a pedestal type flower planter or no rim and it looks like a big bowl. They can also be painted. It's surprising how pretty they end up looking especially once plants are in and trailing over the edges.

http://www.wuvie.net/tireplanter.htm or google "tire planter"

Heidi

I absolutely love this idea, my Better Homes Project book shows this tire planter with the rim & they've sprayed one with a rust color paint & another beaten metal spray paint. You can't believe how nice they looked!

Thank you for the ideas!

Hypertufa will definitly work. or even concrete. Here is a concrete birdbath i made over a snow sled and a square planter i made over a milk crate.

carey
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I broke off a piece of the square planter trying to move it to soon but it should be easy to fix.

Could use an old small satllite dish? Either as a form for the hypertufa, or as a container itself, with appropriate paint or other camouflage?

I saw a show on TV a long time ago that took those giant stainless silver bowls that you have in your kitchen where 10 bowls fit in one. You know the ones. They sprayed the biggest bowl with pam cooking spray (so the concrete wouldn't stick to it) - then put concrete in the bowl maybe 1/3 full and then put one of the other bowls (sprayed in pam on the outside) inside the other bowl and concrete and squished the concrete up the sides of the big bowl till it reached the top. He then put a bunch of rocks or bricks in the little bowl to keep it weighed down and let the concrete set for a while (NOT fully) but enough so that the concrete would keep its shape when you remove the two bowls.

Use a pilates ball as your mold for the hypertufa. It's roughly the size you need.

How about recycling a grill?

There are always dead webber kettles or gas grills out on garbas day around here. Just bury it up to the leave of the surrounding rocks/soil and nobody will know what it is!

If you are in an area with any livestock, a long oval galvanized sheep water trough makes a good planter. It's a good height and a good size.

They actually come in either metal or Rubbermaid plastic. Right in the neighborhood of $100 new.

Sometimes, if you put a want ad on Craigslist, you can get a used one that has rusted through the bottom for a few pennies, or even free.

I suggest using it without painting it and just plant something trailing along the edge. But you can use a spray can of metal paint to change the color.