steel cube planters, part 1

This is the result of one of my week­end projects:

cubessingleplanted.jpgIt’s one of four steel cubes that I assem­bled to put in the new raised bed. The sides of the bed are made of sheet steel that’s already weath­ered to a rich, warm, rusty patina, so I wanted some pots to put in it that were of the same material.

John vetoed my first avant-garde con­cep­tual ideas for arrange­ments, arrange­ments that worked with com­pet­ing sys­tems of geo­met­ri­cal hier­ar­chies, one of them based in part on some of the ideas behind Bernard Tschumi’s post­mod­ernist and highly con­cep­tual Parc de la Vil­lette in Paris. But below is one that I finally came up with that makes us both happy. It has some of the geo­met­ri­cal ten­sions that I wanted to work with. At the same time, the arrange­ment of the ele­ments is a lit­tle chaotic and whimsical–to the point that none of them sit flat on the ground–a qual­ity that appealed to John.

Each pot is planted with the iden­ti­cal plant mate­r­ial. Euphor­bia lam­bii is placed in the cen­ter, point­ing as per­fectly upright and away from the earth’s core as I could man­age with­out get­ting out the level, an effect that I’m hop­ing will point out how crookedly each planter is placed. Creep­ing thyme will even­tu­ally pro­tect the top of the slanted top plane of pot­ting mix.

This is an overview of two of the other con­tain­ers in the gar­den space, here in the mid­dle– and back­ground, with part of the new step­ping stone pathway:

cubesoverview.jpgIf you have basic of weld­ing chops and a sup­plier that will pre-cut pieces fairly accu­rately, you can make them your­self in an after­noon. You could also make sim­i­lar con­tain­ers by screw­ing the steel plate to lit­tle pieces of angle iron. Part 2 of this post pro­vides some basic instruc­tions for the welded ver­sion shown here.

March 24 2008 07:59 pm | Categories: landscape design • my garden | Tags: • • •

5 Responses to “steel cube planters, part 1”

  1. steel cube planters, part 2 : [ Lost in the Landscape ] on 25 Mar 2008 at 8:55 pm #

    […] steel cube planters, part 1 […]

  2. Nicole Wisser on 15 May 2009 at 10:44 am #

    I love your “mus­ings” and use them for inspi­ra­tion in my own gar­den. I’m try­ing a steel veg­gie bed right now. I won­dered if you found the sheet insu­la­tion to make any difference?

  3. lostlandscape on 15 May 2009 at 10:55 am #

    Thanks, Nicole! I’ve used the insu­la­tion only for the pots. I def­i­nitely don’t water them often enough, but I’d say that the insu­la­tion has made a def­i­nite dif­fer­ence, both in keep­ing the soil moister and the roots cooler. The large gar­den steel raised bed has done fine with­out the insu­la­tion, though the steel sid­ing only faces north and east–the least bru­tal sun expo­sures. I’d be inter­ested in hear­ing how your veg­gie bed does. Good luck with your experiment!

  4. Nicole Wisser on 20 May 2009 at 8:56 am #

    My planters are look­ing pretty cool. I used 16 gauge metal and thought it wouldn’t be sturdy enough but they’re hold­ing up just fine. I didn’t use sheet insu­la­tion as you did because I’m plant­ing “poten­tial food” and don’t know what might seep into the soil from the insu­la­tion so I just used some red­wood planks from an old fence. We haven’t had any real scorcher days yet in Santa Rosa so the jury is still out on whether or not the roots will get too hot. I’ll keep you posted.

  5. lostlandscape on 25 May 2009 at 9:19 am #

    Nicole, good luck with your new planters. I think you’ll have the most stun­ning veg­gie bed in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. I like that you’ve recy­cled the red­wood planks–It should be a good insu­la­tor as well as a root bar­rier in case you don’t want some of the left­over machine oil that might still be on the steel to con­tact your plants.

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