Well, we took the first steps of building some large planters for our patio without thinking through all the downfalls. We don't intend for these to last forever, we realize there are some overall design flaws ;) However, we've hit a road block with how to fill these. The original plan was to have a layer of stacked cinder blocks and 5 gal buckets, then a board, then a layer of landscape fabric with the soil and plants on top.

Now we're worried about having the weight of the soil on the fabric if the board is not fit perfectly in the box, we don't want it to rip and dump into the bottom. One option is to just get fill dirt for the bottom layers, but I'm worried about it weighing too much, and that we'll end up with our red Georgia dirt leaking all over the patio.

Any thoughts? Are we safe with the landscape fabric? Are we better off just going with pots within the planter? Or - are there any creative containers (I've looked for baking pans, troughs) that I'm missing? Also not trying to break the bank on this project.

I appreciate any help! I'll update with better lit photos tomorrow, just wanted to get something up after our day of work with no results!

Thanks,