Made in Kent · wooden planters
Your last wooden planter rotted from the bottom. It wasn’t the wood.
Almost every wooden planter rots in the same place, for the same reason, and it’s the one thing the cheap ones never fix. Here’s what’s actually going on, and how we build the Sussex around it.
“The bottom boards are rotting where they’ve come away”
If you’ve had a wooden planter before, you might know the feeling. It looked fine for a season. Then the next spring you tipped it forward and the bottom had gone soft and dark, the boards sagging where they’d pulled away from the screws.
You’re not imagining it, and it isn’t because you did anything wrong. Read the reviews on almost any wooden planter and the same line keeps coming up: “the first bottom boards are now rotting,” “we used treated pine and one by one they’re rotting and falling over,” “not made to last.” People reach for the obvious explanation, cheap wood, and they’re half right. But the wood usually isn’t where it starts.
It rots from the base, because the base sits in trapped water
Here’s the part the cheap planters never tell you. A planter rots from the bottom first, and it rots because the floor sits flat in trapped water.
Fill it with soil and water it, and the water drains down and pools at the bottom. If the floor is solid and flat against the ground or the paving, the soil sits in that water, the timber sits in that water, and wet timber against wet soil rots, treated or not. As one gardener put it: “wood in contact with soil will rot really quickly.” It’s why the metal-planter sellers love to point at wood and say it always rots. On a flat-bottomed box, they have a point.
So the fix isn’t a thicker plank or a stronger chemical. It’s getting the soil up out of the water.
How we build the Sussex around it
The Sussex has a raised inner floor: two boards with a gap down the middle, set up off the very bottom inside the frame. Water drains straight down through the centre gap into the space below, away from the soil and the roots. The soil sits dry on top; the base never sits in a puddle.
From the outside it looks like it’s sitting flat, with no legs to knock or rot. The difference is inside, and it’s the difference between a planter that’s soft at the bottom by the second winter and one that’s still solid in three years.
Solid timber
Solid Northern European softwood, not the thin decorative cladding that warps in the first windy week.
A floor that drains
Two boards with a gap down the middle, raised inside the frame, so water drains away beneath the soil.
Timbac finish
Our own non-toxic, water-and-wax treatment, so the timber’s protected without tanalising or harsh chemicals.
Fully assembled
It turns up solid, lined and ready, drainage built in. No flat-pack, no liner to cut, no propping it on bricks.
The Sussex Planter
✓ Free UK delivery on every order
Same-day dispatch before noon · 2-3 working days · 2-year guarantee
The Sussex vs a typical flat-bottom planter
The Sussex
- Raised inner floor, drains down the middle
- Soil stays up out of the water
- Solid softwood, not thin cladding
- Timbac, safe around edibles
- Arrives fully assembled and lined
- Made in our Kent workshop
- 2-year guarantee, 90-day returns
A typical planter
- Flat base, sits in trapped water
- Soil and timber stay wet, and rot
- Often thin decorative cladding
- Treatment often unstated
- Flat-packed, seal it and line it yourself
- Imported, no traceability
- Short or no guarantee
72 gardens in, and the word that keeps coming back is sturdy
★★★★★ 4.88 out of 5 · 72 reviews
“Sturdy, well built, ready assembled, good price. You can see it is good quality and should last well.” — H.
“Great quality, pretty sturdy, and assembled is a big bonus.” — Lynn J.
Sturdy, and still here. That isn’t luck. It’s solid timber on a base that drains, the two things the rotting planters get wrong.
Still solid in three years, not soft in three months
You’re not gambling £30 on a photo. Every Sussex comes with a 2-year full guarantee, no exclusions. It covers rot and manufacturing, with no small print. And 90-day free returns, including large items. If the bottom of a Sussex ever lets you down, you know exactly whose door to knock on: a real workshop in Kent, not a marketplace seller you’ll never trace.
The Sussex Planter
✓ Free UK delivery on every order
Same-day dispatch before noon · 2-3 working days · 2-year guarantee
- Raised inner floor, drains, stays dry
- Solid Northern European softwood
- Timbac, safe around herbs, pets and children
- Fully assembled, lined, made in Kent
- Free UK delivery on every order
- 2-year guarantee, no exclusions
- 90-day free returns, including large items