My Ever-raining Rain Chain

My winter project for the garden is an Ever-raining Rain Chain made for the Harry Potting Shed. I've seen Pinterest rain chains with these small terracotta pots, but they were spaced much farther apart, and the pots tended to tip to one side or another. I didn't like any samples I saw.

Only 50¢ each. What a bargain!

I wanted to set it up on the potting shed with a buried bucket hidden underground (under a checkerboard garden square), with maybe broken terracotta pots on a grate over the bucket.

A variable speed fountain pump would send water up a tube through the walls of the shed and secretly come out into a gutter on the shed. Gutters are not there yet. Have to wait for warmer weather for that to happen.

The little pots were 50¢ each at Michael's crafts store. The copper wire is just copper wire from some left over electrical wire from other projects that I stripped and shaped - no cost! I shaped the wire, after much experimentation, into a swirl – that I could expand a bit within the pot – so that the pot would not lean and stay pretty much upright.

Took some experimentation, but I found this
round pole that was about the same circumference
as the bottom of the little pots. I put it in my
vice to wrap the copper wire around it.

For the height I need for the space, it will take almost all 30 pots I bought to extend the nearly 90" of the space.

Each pot has a hook on the top and a loop on the bottom. I have not pinched the hooks yet, as I may want to put the "better executed" copper and pots at about eye-level. And I'm not sure exactly how many pots will end up on the rain chain until it's installed outside.

It makes a great tinkling sound as water runs through it. I can't wait for the weather to break to start the install!

Bottoms have a loop - one too large to fit back through the hole in the pot.

And the top side has a hook. The swirl of copper inside the pot keeps it upright on the chain.

It could take all 30 pots I bought to get the 90" height I have in the space it's going to be.

I "dummied-up" (in Photoshop) where the chain will go on the shed. I may have it end in a larger terracotta pot, with the buried bucket underground where you see that hosta where the rain chain ends - in the Harry Potter Garden. I can easily find another spot for that hosta!