DIY Succulent Pallet Table

One of our most popular posts from June 2011.

Can you believe that our latest DIY project was once just a couple of junky pallets and some scrappy table legs?  Crazy…if I didn’t have photos, I wouldn’t believe it myself.  Not too long ago, we whipped out a coffee table sized succulent table out of an old shipping crate. Now we scaled it up.

First bit of advice, deconstructing pallets are a big pain unless you have the right tools…and our hammer and wall scrapper wasn’t quite doing the trick.  Boards were cracking and splitting left and right.  Good news.  We had three pallets to figure out how to do it, and by the second one…we were getting usable boards.

Love the scars of time left on these chunks of pallet wood.

After pulling apart two pallets, we used the 2 x 4 sized boards to make a rectangular frame to attach the appropriated table legs.  Debate went back and forth whether or not to strip the paint off the legs…we’re not huge fans of washed out creamy yellow.  We ended up just leaving them dinged up how we found them.  In the end, it worked in our favor.

Like TV magic (and 2 days later), the table was more or less put together.  We got so into the project that we forgot to take some pics during the building of the succulent hole, oops. Basically the top is made up in three sections. Two flat boards make the right side, three boards make the left. The center three boards were built as a separate planting box…again all using parts of the pallet. We made it this way because we knew the succulent table was going to journey about 45 minutes south to Sunset Test Garden.  The plan was to make the succulent section removable so that it could ride inside the car while the rest of the table may need to be strapped to the roof of the Subaru.

3/8 inch holes where drilled in the bottom, and we decided to go with a fast draining cactus mix. The bulk of the plants are Sempervivum, Sedum, and a hint of Orostachys iwarenge. We plugged in some pea sized pebbles to stabilize and dress up the top.

Yeah, we didn’t hold back on jamming them.  By all means, it would be fine to plant the strip thin and let it grow in.  But when you need it to look full fast…you just hold, tuck and stick until it looks more or less done.

Here you can get a sense of how the center box is separate from the rest of the table…great for traveling.

Speaking of journeys, this guy was on view at the Sunset Magazine Celebration Weekend in the Test Garden down in Menlo Park, CA back in 2011 where it was photographed and for the magazine and Western Gardener. We still have it in our backyard today.