A Planter For The Garden

The outdoor space here is pretty much all block-paving, there is no soil area at all. Makes an easy to manage space but a very dull one to sit in on the rare days we get some sunshine.

I decided to build a planter and followed the usual plan of go big or go home, ended up with a design made from 100mm (4″) fence posts, 2.1m square and 600mm high. Here we are with the first row being planned. The square centre island will have a small water feature on top of it when finished.

The posts are stacked and screwed to the layer below, it makes a very sturdy planter and was quick and simple to put together as none of the lower posts needed cutting.

The top layer is double width to create a seating area, I lined it with some black polythene sheet to keep the worst of the water off the timber and added 100mm of 10mm gravel as a drainage layer. The gravel layer took 450kg of material. There is no base – the floor of the planter is just the block pavers. There are 35 fence posts in all.

The posts used were “incised” and treated – these are supposed to have a longer life in wet conditions, around 15 years in contact with soil. The soil filling took 2300kg which worked out as three jumbo sacks, I had to buy about 100ltr more in small bags from the garden centre to compensate for compression/sinkage after a few weeks.