When we first brought our house we have so many plans and ideas for our garden but I always wanted some form of decking board planters somewhere. Over the last 3 years, our plans for the garden have changed time and time again but the wish for my big raised decking board planters has stayed the same. So now the workshop/office space is built and summer is upon us we decided it was time to finally make my wish come true. Daddy bear built me my planters (with my help of course). We have put it off until now as I knew once they were built there is no moving them (well not easily anyway) so I wanted to make sure we knew exactly where we wanted them.

I had a rough idea of what I wanted them to look like, size and placement in the garden so after talking Daddy bear through my vision and him sharing his wishes for them. We then looked at our budget to make this happen, we aren’t the type of people to not set a budget before a project even if we go over or under a little it helps give us an idea of what money it will cost. Due to still finishing the inside of the office space we wanted to do it on a smaller budget and make it as cost-effective as we could. So we decided to use pine decking boards from B&Q as they were the look I wanted as well as being within our budget. If we had a bigger budget Daddy bear would have used composite boards even though they aren’t made from a renewable source they would have lasted longer and been more cost-effective in the long run but we are still happy with the outcome.

The only thing by using the decking boards we did is they do require a couple of coat of Wood paint/preservative. We chose to use Cuprinol paint that we had already got in the shed from painting Baby bears playhouse. By having to paint it does mean we will have to give it another coat or 2 of paint again in a few years but we have to do that for the fences so I don’t mind that really. However, it is a cost you have to add-in.

Once Daddy bear had cut them all to the lengths we needed we laid them all out and gave them a coat of paint before we started to build the decking board planters. The paint we used dries really quickly so we were able to start building them the day after.

Daddy bear cut 4 lengths of timber for each planter to the just under the height of the planters to put in each corner to help give it the strength. We then nailed each decking board to the posts before screwing into it. If you know Daddy bear you know his Ryobi Tools are his babies so I was very excited he let me actually use them (I useless with power tools so I usually don’t use them).

Once we had built them Daddy bear then cut 4 lengths of metal (2 for each planter) to attach to 2 of the decking board planters to help keep it off the floor (we also put some stones under the edging). We then prepared the ground where we were placing them.

Once they were in place, we lined them with a damp proof membrane and filled them up with 2/3rd of dirt we had from digging the garage foundations. I then added a 2/3 of a big bag of compost on top with some Chicken fertilizer pellets. I then topped it all off with a mixture of the leftover compost and ground dirt. Each planter holds around a ton each so they are nice and big for me to plant all the things.

I have given them 2 more coats of paint so they have had 3 coats of paint but I love them and we are even seeing the starts of our lettuces and spinach growing.