For many of us, the number of plants in our homes can be modeled by a piecewise function. We start out slow and linear experimenting with simple herbs like basil or mint and branching out to more aesthetic plants like pothos or philodendron. We become emboldened by our early success, and the function turns exponential. We add tropical plants, and peppers, and fruits until the capacity of our homes becomes saturated at which point our purchases slow down and we move into the final logarithmic part of our function.
All of this is to say that as I approached the exponential part of this theoretical piecewise function, I needed a way to rapidly add more pots to house the plants that increasingly took up more and more space in my apartment.
For the pot itself, I used an 8” PVC pipe that was cut to size on a lathe. The bottom of the pipe has a laser cut acrylic plate with drainage holes which is attached to the pipe using PVC weld.
Teak wood was used to create the veneer for the vases. I laser cut 2D lines into the wood to mechanically compromise it such that I could wrap it around the PVC pipe. The wood was sealed to prevent it from rotting, and the entire assembly was suspended using a 3D printed and painted base. If you’re interested in making your own, source files and instructions can be found here.
I did this project at the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic at a time when it didn’t feel particularly moral to use shipping resources on McMaster parts. As such, I made do with what I had which unfortunately included rubber bands and not hose clamps.
Attaching the veneer is the hardest part of this assembly. It’s ideally done by roughing both the PVC pipe and wood then spreading epoxy uniformly over the wood surface and using hose clamps to apply radial compression while the epoxy dries. Technically, you can apply radial compression however you’d like, and for me this involved copious numbers of rubber bands. This image represents about half of the rubber bands that were eventually needed. The veneer also had a tendency to creep upwards which was defeated by a large weight.
These days I have four of these planters in my apartment housing Habanero, Jalapeno, Bell Pepper, and Mint plants. Unfortunately, I find myself at the logarithmic part of the plant growth piecewise function, so I won’t be adding many more plants until I get a bigger space.
In the meantime, hopefully this is a useful framework for making fairly quick, low-cost, and aesthetic planters. If anyone ends up making planters based on this design, I’d love to see them.