DIY Pallet Planter box – Easy to build & Recycle!

Here’s a DIY planter box (with some character) made from an old wooden pallet! Here’s some inspiration for your own project.

DIY pallet planter box
Here you can see the planter box finished. The box is made from recycled pallet wood and some various other recycled materials.

To complete this project, I basically needed:

  • Pallet(s)I literally got one of these of a nearby footpath, you might need two depending on the size.  I used two small pallets to make this big box but you could easily make a small planter box from one pallet.
  • Saw or eletric jigsaw – handsaw is more than fine, a eletric jigsaw obviously quicker
  • Sand paper or electric sanderwe’ll use this to give a better finish and smooth off the edges and surfaces of the box
  • Measuring tapeyou’ll need this for some planning
  • Strong nailsfor holding it all together
  • A bunch of sunny daysbecause it’s nice to get outside, but useful for paint drying off.
  • Outdoor paintI used red for the outside of the box and black for the inside.
  • Hammer and crowbarfor hammering of course and removing the old nails from the pallet.
  • Compostfor the plants, I used half from a composter I have in the garden and half is purchased
  • Stones – to lay at the bottom of the box to enable better drainage and space out the bottom of the box
  • Plastic lining – I used some basic sheeting and cut to size.
  • Stapler – for keeping the plastic sheet in place in the box
  • Stanley knife – for cutting the sheet

     Planning the size of the box

The size of the box is basically limited to the size of the wooden panels you will salvage from the pallet.  So basically, if you manage to get a really long pallet, you’ll be able to create more planks for your box.  I kept things relatively simple and that was to have a box made up longer sides and then shorter sides.

Building a planter box from a pallet- plan!
Pallets come in sorts of shapes and sizes, remember to keep things simple for your planter box if you want to ensure you have enough wood to finish your project!

The shorter sides would be roughly half the size of the longer sides.  That made it quite easy for me to work out how many planks I needed to build up the side of the boxes.

The best thing to do at this point, is find yourself a pallet and start breaking it down then review what wood is available for use.  There will almost be some panels that come away badly from the pallet and will split or breakup, which can render them unusable. So, remove the nails and panels from the skip carefully as possibly but don’t worry, you can always get yourself another pallet.

Find and then break up the pallet

Once you’ve got yourself a pallet, start using a the crowbar and hammer to pull apart the panels.  To speeden up the process, what I did was to cut away the edges in a straight line fashion like this:

planterbox-pallet-cutting

Use a marker pen,  you could even measure up the length you need and cut to length now but don’t worry if you don’t know what the lengths are going to be, you can always shorten them later on in the project.

That left panels held together with the blocks in the middle.  Removing the edges, has made it easier to remove the nails and middle blocks.

planterbox-pallet-cut

Remove the panels from the centre holding plank and blocks.

Attempt to fit the crowbar down the sizes of the panel and leverage the panels from the center.  Another technique is to hammer the crowbar into the panels to get behind the nail, the pry out the nail.

Once this is done, you should be left with nice panels.  This isn’t easy work, so don’t be afraid to give it some might! If you have some panels with some dirty sides, face them inwards, leaving the better side facing outwards.

wooden-planks-from-a-pallet

Remember to hammer out the nails from the blanks!

When you’ve finished salvaging planks from the pallet, you should have some nice planks ready for your DIY planter box. 

Don’t worry about any marks or roughness, we’ll sand those out later and a good paint will hide any stains in the wood.

Do some planning and cut the planks to length.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take nearly as many pictures as I should have done, apologies for that but basically here’s what we are trying to achieve at this point:

DIY planter box design

I’ll list the steps for constructing the foundations of the box.

Create the foundations of the box.  Red are the long sides with blue shorter planks laid upon them.  Then nail them to each other.Box Design 1

Now, we’ll add some side panels.

Box Design 2

The yellow panels are upright and form the foundation of the walls. Again, nail everything together.

IMG_6484

Keep building up the walls in the same fashion until you get to the height you want.

If you find yourself getting some planks a bit longer than needed, cut off the edges with the handsaw or jigsaw.

I built up the sides of box with planks of wood as far as to hiding the inside four corner supporting posts.  Remember to nail some corner posts!

Nailing the box side panels

I used four nails for each plank.  That’s two at each end nailing the plank to the supporting corner posts.   Basically, nail where you think the support is needed, and use nails to nail planks to planks around the corners.

IMG_6486

Hopefully, your box will start to look a little something like this.

Sanding and preparing the planter box for painting

To smooth things over a little, use some course 60grit  sanding  paper and block OR an orbital sander.  Go over all of the box surfaces and round off the top and corners of the box a little to your taste, this will give a nicer finish.

sanding pallet wood down

Paint the inside of the planter box

You don’t have to do this but I thought it was best to protect the wood as much as possible from the elements, it might add some more life to the box after all.  I used some spare black paint in the workshop.

IMG_6488
Work in progress, paint the inside of the box black.

Adding feet to the planter box

You can pretty much use anything for the feet, but I took an old wooden pole and divided it into four equal lengths and then screwed them to the bottom of the box in equal distances apart.

The next picture shows the feet attached to the bottom of the box.

IMG_6490

The box is ready for painting

Choose any colour you like but make sure it is suitable for protecting wood and you’ll get plenty of life from the box.  I chose a traditional red colour for the box and got my local DIY store to mix the paint for me.  This didn’t cost much and is so far the only new material I have purchased for the project.  Everything else including the screws and nails have been recycled.

Start to paint the wood, you’ll need at least a 2-3 coats of paint and you can leave about 15-20 minutes on a sunny warm day between each coat.

Painting a planter box
Make sure you have enough paint for two to three coats of paint.

IMG_6492

When finished painting, leave it to try for a day.  You might then need to do some touching up or paint the edges of the top of the box to leave a nice finish.

Move the box into position, because when you have filled it, it will be very difficult to move.

Red traditional painted planter box
Tip the box over and check it, do some finishing touches like around the edges.

Now the box is pretty much ready but before that we should add some plastic lining.  Use any strong plastic lining, I would not use plastic bags for example but something quite strong.

IMG_6498

You should cut the plastic lining more than three times the length and width of the box.  This is to ensure that when we stuff it into the box, it comes up to edges on all of the insides of the box. Like so …

IMG_6500

Start to fold and layout the lining so that it is need, this is little like wrapping a gift! You’ll need to overlap and fold over the plastic sheeting but bascially get it into position where you can start to cut off excess and staple it into position.  Use some retaining screws if you need to hold things in place to make it progressively easier to neaten the lining.

When you have the lining neatly attached to the box, use a screwdriver to pierce holes evenly through the plastic lining at the base of the box to allow for the drainage of excess water.

IMG_6499
Some essential things, the screws are washer screws, great for retaining plastic lining

Lay granite stones in the base of the box, enough to cover the surface one time.

granite-stones-for-planter-box

Bigger ones at the bottom and smaller on the top.

Then you can start to add the compost, I used a mix of compost from the composter and from bags that I purchased.

When you think you have enough compost, now for the fun part, add some flowers and water them in the evening.

DIY pallet planter box

And hopefully, you should have something like mine above…

So, there you are! I hope you found the post useful and inspirational for your own project – good luck!

Let me know how you get on with your project, post a quick comment below and a pic of your own planter box below!

10 responses to “DIY Pallet Planter box – Easy to build & Recycle!”

  1. […] Just follow the simple Tutorial here. […]

  2. Great planter box I love this one. I will try make one

    1. Thanks and get creative =)

  3. Great idea, well illustrated and good attention to detail. Thanks for sharing it.

  4. […] Here is a cute small pallet flower box made using a few pallet boards and some other construction tools that you might already have lying around you! It’s all the way easy that beginners and experts both can follow and work on easily. All you need to have are materials like wood boards, pallet boards, pocket hole screws, construction adhesive, paint colors, brad nails, etc. nickpower […]

  5. […] a handy guide to building a DIY pallet planter, along with useful pallet planter box plans to help you visualise […]

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