Building a Planter Box

Little by little, we’ve been trying to make our backyard a bit nicer. While perusing the internet at all hours of the night, I came across a really nice planter box from HGTV that included instructions.

Off to Home Depot I went to buy all the lumber and supplies I would need. The only problem was that lumber was about 2x as expensive this year than it was a year ago because of supply issues due to flooding and damaged infrastructure making it harder to get wood out of BC and to consumers.

Despite the high prices, I needed a project to keep me sane so I spent way too much on wood and got to work.

The first step was to cut the frame and lay out the long pieces.

I then cut a bunch of 2x2s that would help hold everything together and attached them to the structure.

Once all the 2x2s were attached, I added the top 2×10 pieces.

Once the outer frame was complete, it was time to add some structural support to help keep its shape. I added 2 2x4s on the inside and also added a row of 2x4s along the top to give the planter a thicker frame.

I then dry fit my cut cedar boards where the bench would be and installed more 2x4s to support the cedar.

I then sanded the entire frame, cleaned it and primed it.

Once the frame was primed, I painted the entire thing in 2 coats of Benjamin Moore black exterior paint. The same paint that our deck canopy was painted in.

The final step was to install and seal the cedar boards for the bench. I sealed the boards with the same sealant I used for the deck – Cabot Stain. Once the pieces were dry, I dry fit to make sure everything fit. I then held the first piece on using clamps and screwed the board on with my camo tool so none of the screws would be visible. I then moved on to the top of the bench, then finished the rest of the side pieces.

I also added garden fabric to the inside of the frame to keep moisture away from the wood as much as possible (even though it’s pressure treated and probably fine). We then moved the planter in place and started filling it with dirt from gravel-y dirt from our front yard and some old gravel from when we removed it from the backyard.

I used the random infill to fill the bulk of the planter and then installed another layer of garden fabric over the infill dirt.

I then filled the top 12″ or so with clean topsoil from the garden centre. The fabric would hopefully keep out any weeds from my random dirt pile and create a clean home for new plants.

I chose all lavender plants and planted them at equal intervals in the planter.

With some cedar around the planter and some new garden lights (which lasted about a week before the squirrels chewed through them), our backyard was already looking better! Just don’t look at the back half of the yard…