For the front of our house I wanted to incorporate plants that I could change out seasonally or whenever I want to switch things up.
The landscape out front was already established and I had no intentions of digging into the ground to continuously update the look. I knew the plants had to be somewhere around our front doors. That's right, plural doors. You know those houses that have a main front door? The "stately" one at the center of the house that nobody uses? Instead everyone enters and exits through the door over to the side, next to the garage. Well that's us.
I wanted 2 small planters for the stately door. And they needed to be small because while it's the main focal point from the street, the porch it sits on is tiny.
Then there's the porch for the side front door. It's wider, so a large planter box was a must. I set out to design these planters without a thought for buying them. I knew anything I would need would call for way too much customization than it would be worth to hunt down in the store (or online) and they would probably be overpriced.
I came up with a plan and started drawing out designs in my notebook.
I created the smaller planter boxes first and I documented that whole process in this video:
Essentially I used about three 1" x 4" x 8" pressure treated boards from Home Depot to make the 2 small planter boxes, cutting these down to eight 16" boards and sixteen 8" boards in total. Plus 2 thin pieces of plywood for the bottoms. (Check out the video to see this in action!)
For the larger one, I used the same concept and another 3 or so boards. These are the dimensions I used for all of the pieces, which I did not include in the video:
And here's the finished product, before staining.
I hope this inspires you to make something great!