Creating Planter Brackets From Junk

Lenny and I have been thinking about adding some plants to our pond. In order to contain some plants that can be invasive we had acquired some planter boxes someone had put out with their trash. Now that we had the boxes we needed to find a way to attach them to our pond so that they would be easier to maintain. I guess you could consider them like a bog. The boxes were manufactured with holes in the bottom to allow water to drain out, but for this purpose, they will allow water to flow in. We will be filling the boxes with soil after lining the bottom with a piece of fabric so that it does not escape through the holes.

To begin this project, I went out to our scrap pile. At first I began looking for a long straight piece of metal to slip under the lip of the boxes in order to support and hold them in place. I found a piece I could work with and needed to find something to use as a bracket that would fit over the edge of the pond and connect to the piece of metal supporting the boxes.

That is when I found these:

An old refrigerator shelf, perfect.

To get the pieces I was after, I needed to remove the metal rods that held the shelf together. To do this I used a reciprocating saw using a blade for cutting metal.

Here we have the metal pieces and rods once separated.

Then I took one of the pieces over to the pond and bent it to fit and brought it over to the picnic bench where I lined up the rest to make the same bend.

One bend down, one more to go. Because the metal was thicker as the pieces got wider I decided to take them over to the vise for the final bend. I took one piece back over to the pond to see where the next bend needed to be, bent it, and then used that piece as a template as to where the bend needed to be on the rest.

Here is what it looked like with both bends made.

Once I had fabricated the bracket I needed to figure out how to attach it to my straight piece of metal. After looking it over we found that the design ended up needing modification and the straight piece of metal went back to the scrap pile. It turns out, that by connecting two brackets together I essentially made exactly what I was needing with a lot less thinking.

So we took two brackets and attacked them with a single self drilling 8 x 1/2 panhead screw. These screws are great to have on hand because they have been found to have many purposes.

Here is how they turned out.

Here we did a test fit on the edge of the pond.

Then we added the planter box.

To finish up this project I will be painting the brackets to prevent rusting and the part of the bracket the goes over the edge of the pond will end up being covered by stone.

For any questions or suggestions feel free to leave a comment or e-mail us at thehomesteadjones@yahoo.com .