Entrance hall with an indoor plant box

by karen
(gauteng, South Africa)

An old fashioned (1980s) entrance hall with facebrick plant box currently planted with synthetic plants!

I have a couple of ideas:

1) Fill the plant box with ground to top - cover ground with large pebbles (white) - instead of planting in the boxes - arrange beautiful colourful, different sized pots, with plants in different height, size, etc.
Use box frames on wall for ornaments, to store keys, sunglasses, etc.

2) As above, but cladd wall in stone - no box frames

3) Cover plant box with wood and use as a stool/storage, with colourful cushions, etc, and a beautiful large mirror

What do you think?