Built to replace an old barrel planter, the brief was a garden planter with sides 20″ tall to deter rabbits from jumping up and munching on the plants. This meant that either the planter would be on stilts, or it would contain a ridiculous amount of compost. The solution was to build a smaller planter with over length legs and construct maple trellis to bring the sides to the desired height.
We went all out on this project, normally for the side we would have used multiple oak boards, but for this project we opted for 10″ wide 1″ thick oak planks for a better aesthetic (I know, boards that width are ridiculously expensive!).
I’m a little bit in love with the detail on each leg, with a decorative groove cut around the top of a chamfered foot. Like the trellis this is a subtle way to increase the height of the planter without adding to the bulk.
Construction on this took a while, amazingly there are 80 individually crafted pieces of wood for each planter…. and we made two of them as they are a pair! The cutting list alone was scary enough let alone the task of putting everything together, but the end result was worth the effort and time.
The corner posts are two inch square, panels and base are all 1″ thick with 1/2″ beams supporting them so despite the size these planters are robust as anything, horrendously heavy even without the 100 litres of compost! As with all our planters, these are lined with super thick 300mu polythene sheeting so should last years (decades!).
Then all that was left was to pop some strawberry plants in, a quick spray with the garden hose, and wait for a couple of months for a crop which should hopefully be June time!
