[chrisbitz]

Hi there,

I've been reading your forum all morning for ideas, and been loving it!

I'm working and learning with my garden, and I'd like to build a brick planter at the far right of my 8mx8m garden. (the pic is an artist's impression) :-)

I've measured up, and it's going to be 2.1m x 1.3m x 1m high, with a cut out for a seat at one end.

I'm on a tight budget (otherwise I'd have got one of you experts to do it for me) :-) but I was just wondering if anyone had any advice for me? I'm really enjoying learning from my mistakes, but some things are more permanent than others.... Should the walls be double thickness to save them bowing with the weight of soil or wouldn't it be enough to need it?

Are there any things that might catch me out? is it too high? things like that?

I'm located in Orpington, Kent, SE England.

Thanks very much,

Chris.

[Bill Schwab]

Chris:

In your situation, where you want the look of brick, I would build the planter of 8-8-16 block (concrete building blocks, use rebar to hold it all together, and grout the voids with concrete. Then I would use real clay face brick over the block, and then take a pastry bag full of mortar to fill in the joints so it lookas it was full size brick. If you can't get real face brick, you could use the building block and then add real brick to the face. When you were done, you would have something about a foot wide which makes a great seat wall.

As an alternative, does anyone make a segmental wall product in your neck of the woods? Much easier than brick and mortar.