building a large container

Hi,

I have a tarmac drive which looks horrible. Short than pulling up trmac and concrete which I cannot afford, I was thinking of using some very large containers.
Could I build these using wood?


Has anyone tried doing this? What is the best wood type to use? T&G boards? Chipboard?

Thanks

 

I have a similar problem

We have gravel drive, but no flower beds along the house front. We have some urns and large pots, which are OK but not what I really want. I think these things only work if they have enough soil volume to keep the plants going - and the urns I've got are a compromise because they are either not enough diameter, not enough depth, or [for too many of mine] both :(

One of the other problems is that when first planted they look at bit pathetic until the plants have established - so I prepare the pots in the greenhouse / conservator for a few weeks in May before bringing out at the start of June when the frost danger has past.

I think what I want to make are some Versailles tubs - see pictures below

My plan is to have numerous basic containers (fibreglass maybe?) and then some nice wooden? "false fronts" that I can hide the containers with.

By having numerous containers I have have them round the back somewhere, bring on the plants for the next "season", and then plonk them in front of the house when they are ready, and just put the "fronts" on.

So Hanging-basket type plants for the summer (Fushia, trailing lobelia, Petunia)

Bedding chrysanthemums for the Autumn

Topiary / Holly / Bay for the Winter

Bulbs for the Spring, possibly also wallflowers or similar

Need to be a bit thoughtful about the weight. My thought on that is that I have a mini tractor with hydraulic arms and some "forks" (sort of like a fork lift truck), so I would like to make the containers such that I could slip two bits of wood under them [the Tub could be on bricks, or somesuch, to create a "gap" under it] and then lift the wood on the forks to take it "round the back" and bring the replacement

These people have Teak planters with stainless-steel liners, but they work out around £300 each, and I reckon I can knock something up for a lot less than that

http://www.chicteak.co.uk/teakplanters.asp








This is what they look like in Versailles :thumb:

 

Kristen, dead easy to do.

Personally id make the inside boxes out of galvanised sheet , folded and riveted and webbing handles so as to not take space. Drainadge holes in base. Possibly paint the box inside with bitumen paint.

Timber decorative box made up, treated with clear preserver then painted. One side hinged but no floor.... angle iron around the base or similar to suport the galvanised inner box (no floor on the timber box to avoid rotting)

K, if you left off the angle iron from the hinged side you could get the tractor forks in unn restricted.

 

Pro you are a star mate!

Huge improvement on my original plan, and bending galvanised sheet is within my skill set, plus I have riveting tools and all that jazz.

OTOH I know NOTHING about fibreglass!

Cheers, and have an e-Beer on me!

 

been thinking of doing this as well. we have a poured concrete wall along the side of our hpuse. it's the reinforced stell type as the green area on the other side is 8ft higher than our site. basically ugly as hell, have been thinking of building a riased bed on top of the tarmac section to grow some climbers to cover the wall. i can't see why it wouldn't work, railway sleepers were my first idea, but still in the planning section

 

"Cheers, and have an e-Beer on me! "


Lol will do!!

BTW, You should be able to get the galvanised sheet from a large farmers merchant, around here it would be mole valley. A metals firm would probably supply though...

 

well i was thinking of building a little wall boundary on the tarmac and pour some soil in it but have been told that everything will die as the drainage will be poor and the water will just flow off the tarmac.

I'd like to build my own container but not sure what materials to use. I have a 6m length of drive i'd like to fill up with flowers, plants etc etc.

 

Just in case I've spotted something that you haven't considered:

If you are going to build a flower bed against the wall of the house it should not come above the damp proof course - or if it needs to then you must take careful steps to make sure that there is a waterproof membrane between the two, and probably also that the outside of the wall can still "breath"

 

i presume original poster is like me, it is a boundary wall he is building against.

as for your drainage problem i have a drain at one end of the section i wanted to build over, was going to stop the bed just short of it and add some drainage holes to the bottom of the bed. even if you build it with brick, can you not jsut drill some drainage holes into your retaining wall? i know it will be draining onto the tarmac, but it should runn off to a drain?

 

Or perhaps you could put some perforated drainage pipe into the bottom of the bed so that any surplus water can collect in that, and flow to one end (downhill would help of course!)