Readers of my blog are aware of my focus on products created with sustainable design principles that give excellent value for money and the effort that goes into bringing vibrant gardens to barren urban spaces in need of their beneficial cooling and air quality enhancing properties.
While I created the square and rectilinear wooden garden planters sold by DeepStream Designs, there are other design and material options available from DeepStream as a national distributor of Tournesol Siteworks products for the past six years. Tournesol has an extensive product line of very high-quality commercial planters that have been used by Landscape Architects and commercial landscapers for more than 30 years.
While I created the square and rectilinear wooden garden planters sold by DeepStream Designs, there are other design and material options available from DeepStream as a national distributor of Tournesol Siteworks products for the past six years. Tournesol has an extensive product line of very high-quality commercial planters that have been used by Landscape Architects and commercial landscapers for more than 30 years.
If you need more options in terms of form and style, three of the best alternatives to wooden garden planters are fiberglass (and fiberglass reinforced plastic FRP), glass-fiber reinforced concrete (GFRC), and LLDPE - a form of plastic. However, products manufactured with these materials run the scale from virtually worthless to the quality that Landscape Architects specify for signature projects.
There are a lot of considerations that go into choosing the right planter for a particular location including: form, root ball heating, and drainage, as well as the inherent limitations of materials and construction methods. You will find a detailed discussion of the issues with a lot of supporting pictures in my 2010 blog entry, Garden Planters, so I'll not repeat them here.
Fiberglass is an excellent lightweight material with which to create interesting planter forms. Fiberglass planters that have the outer gelcoat infused with metal, which oxidizes over time, have long been a favorite of mine for their understated elegance. You will find a myrid of forms and sizes available on the DeepStream website, and while there are four metal finishes, my favorites are the copper and bronze.
The Fiberglass planters we distribute are manufactured by Tournesol with expensive polyester-based fiberglass like we use in yacht construction, where the hull has constant exposure to water. This Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic, FRP, is fabric hand-laid in open molds, not the inferior and very weak chopped fiberglass sprayed into molds by many other manufacturers.
Fiberglass is a lightweight, strong material made up of layers of polyester resin alternated with woven fiberglass mat. The strength and durability of fiberglass depend upon the number of layers of resin and mat, and the weight of the mat. Because these planters are designed to withstand being outdoors, Tournesol typically uses the heaviest mat available and applies at least one layer more than most other fiberglass manufacturers. To ensure the longevity of the planters, they are waterproofed with an additional layer of black gelcoat resin inside.
Another light weight material appropriate for even large commercial-grade garden planters is LLDPE. LLDPE, linear low-density polyethylene, is a highly versatile plastic material known for its chemical and tear resistance. Tournesol uses it for their rotationally-molded planters, and DeepStream uses it for its standard planter liners.
LLDPE is non-polar, which gives it great chemical resistance, but also prevents paint from adhering to the surface unless specially treated. This lends the material a degree of graffiti-resistance. For this reason, while black planter liners can be made from recycled material, planters must be made of integrally colored virgin material and pigments. Our long-term testing shows that polyethylene exhibits very good environmental resistance when treated with a UV inhibitor as these products are.
Before I started building wooden planters, I chose Tournesol's Seacrest planters in LLDPE for palm trees on the roof top garden of a building that I developed and now live in. The planters are eight-years-old now, and they look as good today as the did upon arrival. These strong double-wall planters have even been through a couple of hurricanes and, as you can see, the trees are doing very well.
The Fiberglass planters we distribute are manufactured by Tournesol with expensive polyester-based fiberglass like we use in yacht construction, where the hull has constant exposure to water. This Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic, FRP, is fabric hand-laid in open molds, not the inferior and very weak chopped fiberglass sprayed into molds by many other manufacturers.
Fiberglass is a lightweight, strong material made up of layers of polyester resin alternated with woven fiberglass mat. The strength and durability of fiberglass depend upon the number of layers of resin and mat, and the weight of the mat. Because these planters are designed to withstand being outdoors, Tournesol typically uses the heaviest mat available and applies at least one layer more than most other fiberglass manufacturers. To ensure the longevity of the planters, they are waterproofed with an additional layer of black gelcoat resin inside.
Another light weight material appropriate for even large commercial-grade garden planters is LLDPE. LLDPE, linear low-density polyethylene, is a highly versatile plastic material known for its chemical and tear resistance. Tournesol uses it for their rotationally-molded planters, and DeepStream uses it for its standard planter liners.
LLDPE is non-polar, which gives it great chemical resistance, but also prevents paint from adhering to the surface unless specially treated. This lends the material a degree of graffiti-resistance. For this reason, while black planter liners can be made from recycled material, planters must be made of integrally colored virgin material and pigments. Our long-term testing shows that polyethylene exhibits very good environmental resistance when treated with a UV inhibitor as these products are.
Before I started building wooden planters, I chose Tournesol's Seacrest planters in LLDPE for palm trees on the roof top garden of a building that I developed and now live in. The planters are eight-years-old now, and they look as good today as the did upon arrival. These strong double-wall planters have even been through a couple of hurricanes and, as you can see, the trees are doing very well.
This 48" diameter by 30" high double-wall 15 cu ft LLDPE planter shown above weighs in at only 150 lbs empty and is manufactured by Tournesol Siteworks.
Where heavier weight is an attribute not an liability, as in streetscapes, don't overlook planters made with GFRC, fiberglass reinforced concrete. GFRC, 6-7 time heavier than FRP, has the look of concrete, without the weight, and it's even more durable.
By adding long-strand glass fibers and woven mat to concrete, the strength of the material increases so the thickness can be decreased. This decreases the thickness by 60% (from typically 3” in cast concrete to 1” in GFRC) which directly reduces the weight by the same amount. Just as important, the fiberglass eliminates the steel rebar that eventually rusts and breaks the planter apart from inside through a process called spalling as the rusting metal expands.
By adding long-strand glass fibers and woven mat to concrete, the strength of the material increases so the thickness can be decreased. This decreases the thickness by 60% (from typically 3” in cast concrete to 1” in GFRC) which directly reduces the weight by the same amount. Just as important, the fiberglass eliminates the steel rebar that eventually rusts and breaks the planter apart from inside through a process called spalling as the rusting metal expands.
There are two primary reason to choose GFRC planters. First, they are very strong and rigid, and second, they offer the aesthetic choice of the two different finishes – travertine and acid etched. The travertine finish has a rustic, puckered appearance. The acid etch has a consistent, fine sand texture. From one base material color, the two finish colors will vary because of the sand and aggregate exposed. All colors are integral to the material, so will effectively hide chipping and scratching.
