DIY Tiered Strawberry Planter | Vertical Planter Box for Your Garden

This strawberry planter is a perfect DIY project for growing strawberries in vertical tiers. It serves as a raised strawberry bed with 3 tiers of box planters – great for small space gardening.

Don’t forget to download this project’s cutting guide at the end of the post, to get the exact measurement I used for this project, for maximize the material usage with a budget.

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Strawberries are one of the best fruits to grow in a compact space

Strawberries are probably one of the best fruits you can grow in a small space! It is just so beginner friendly.

Strawberry plants are so easy to take care of, and will reward you with lots of strawberries throughout the summer as long as you keep the water coming.

It is also small space friendly because of the compact plant size. If you only got a patio but want to grow edibles, strawberry is the way to go!

If you are thinking about growing strawberries, it is definitely worth spending some time to think about what is the best planter to grow strawberry – especially if you are constrained with space.

To buy strawberry plants, actually the cheapest way is buying them bare root, such as this one.

This way is a lot cheaper than buying them from garden centers, since you’ll need to plant a lot of those babies to maximize your delicious harvest 🙂

What is the best planter for strawberries?

To produce a lot of delicious strawberries, you’ll need to plant many plants. This is due to the nature of how strawberries are formed on the plants and the small size of the plants.

So that means, traditionally growing strawberries can take a lot of horizontal space.

Because of that, it is best to grow strawberry plants vertically. Nowadays, I see a lot of people use vertical strawberry planters, such as this stackable planter, and this ceramic planter.

But you can probably tell those commercial strawberry pots are not very cheap, and they can be hard to set up irrigation system around them. Also they are not the prettiest planter.

Because we want to grow strawberries in our backyard, we would like the strawberry planter to look more permanent and blend in better with our backyard landscaping, such as some wooden raised beds.

Growing strawberries in vertical tiers

A couple months ago I discovered a tiered flower planter from Ana White’s website. And I thought: with some modification, a tiered planter will be so perfect for planting strawberries!

The planter box can be shallow and wide so that we can pack so many plants inside. Also because each tier is staggered, it would maximize the sunlight received. 

My husband and I were so excited and ended up building this out on a weekend!

We’ve already gained some experience on building garden stuff from the $5 DIY trellis tutorial project, so this DIY strawberry planter is a great opportunity to take our skill to the next level.

This is what this DIY tiered planter looked like in early March, when strawberries just started forming:

This is during mid April, that you can already pick up some ripe strawberries.

In my experience, strawberry is a very satisfying plant to grow as it produce fruits quite fast, and always taste delicious – so much better than those ones from the store 🙂

DIY tiered strawberry planter dimension and materials

Strawberry planter finished dimensions

The finished strawberry planter is 34.5″ wide and 23″ tall, with each planter box 30″W x 7″D x 5.5″H. There’s 2″ gap between each planter box.

We put around 10 strawberry plants in each planter box, so around 30 plants for the entire tiered planter.

We have found it is a pretty good spacing for us. It allows us to have many plants to maximize fruit production, without being over crowded.

Tools

2″ screws (make sure to buy exterior grade screws)

Brad nails (exterior grade)

Brad nailer

Clamps

Miter saw

Wood boards

For the wood boards, we got some interior/exterior grade boards from our local Home Depot: 

• 1″ x 6″ x 8ft board for the 3 planter boxes that serves as tiers

• 2″ x 4″ x 8ft board for the post that will support the strawberry planter boxes.

The size and amount of boards was based on:

1. what size of boards are available in the store so we can minimize cutting.

2. What size of each strawberry planter box we wanted to have. This step helps to maximize the usage of each board, thus reduce the material cost.

The total wood board cost is around $30. considering how many strawberry plants we can tuck in there, it is a pretty good deal. We ended up plant ~30 strawberry plants there, 10 per tier.

DIY strawberry planter cutting guide

Want to get the exact measurement of what I used for this DIY strawberry planter project? Download this FREE cutting guide:

Tiered strawberry planter DIY instructions

The process was pretty straight forward, so I’d say this is a simple but rewarding DIY project for your garden.

For the design, we were inspired by Ana White’s tiered flower planter plan, but made quite some updates in order to make it more ideal for growing strawberries vertically:

We optimized the sizing of this strawberry planter so it not only reduces material waste but also makes it more ideal growing strawberries.

We also used a stronger wood board (2×4) for the legs, so it can support the weight of the three planter boxes quite well.

And the end result is longer but shallower planter boxes – A perfect DIY tiered planter for growing strawberries!

Here is our entire DIY step by step process:

Step 1. Cut wood boards to size

First, we used a miter saw to cut the boards to size based on our calculation. You can see specifically how many boards we used and the sizes in the cutting guide.

Generally speaking, there will be two piles of boards, one pile for building three planter boxes, and the other pile contains five 2×3 boards which will be used as the legs and support.

Then you want to take out the bottom boards of each planter box and drill some drainage holes on them to make sure water can drain so the root won’t rot.

I drilled 5 holes per planter box. You can use a bigger drill bit or a spade bit to do that.

Step 2. Assemble 3 planter boxes

Next comes to assembling three long planter boxes.

To make sure it is super sturdy, we first used exterior grade wood glue to stick those boards together. Then we used brad nails (also exterior grade) to secure them in place.

To finish it off, we screw some 2″ exterior screws close to the end of each sides. If you have pocket hole jig on hand, it would be even better to connect those boards together using pocket holes.

Usually when I use wood glue, I like to let it sit and cure overnight. In fact, wood glue can be stronger than screws if you let it fully release its power 😛

Step 3. Attach legs to planter boxes

After all the boxes were assembled, it is time to add the legs to connect all three tiers together.

We attached the supporting legs with 2″ screws, starting from the top planter box.

Bar clamps always come in handy when we screw things together. We did pre-drill pilot holes first then used the screws. This will make assembly easier and prevent wood from splitting.

Then we attached the horizontal bar to connect the two legs. This will keep the legs together and also distribute the weight.

After that’s done, attach the 2 diagonal front legs.

This step is a bit tricky because you may find either the front or back legs slightly longer than the other. That’s why I recommend doing a rough cut first for the front diagonal legs, meaning leaving an extra couple inches for wiggle room (see picture below).

So position the front legs and make sure four legs and the planter are reasonably leveled (doesn’t have to be perfect).

A good trick is to use a bar clamp to clamp the front legs to the top planter box. Then adjust the whole thing by sliding the front legs, by leaving the extra bits hanging on top of the planter. Then you can mark the extra length with a pencil and cut it off.

Then you can attach the front legs with outdoor screws.

Step 4. Attach remaining 2 boxes

Once your planter (which has four legs and one box) can stand on its own pretty well, you can attach the remaining two strawberry planter boxes.

This step is pretty straight forward. Just sandwich the box between two front legs, and use screws to secure them, while leaving an even spacing between each planter box.

We left about 2 inches between each box.

Step 5. Add strawberries in

Now you have done the hard work and all you need to do is the exciting task – growing strawberries in your garden!

Simply add some soil and plug in your bare root or fully rooted plants.

There are so many species within the strawberry family that we actually grow three different on three tiers.

Here’s a picture of what our strawberries look like a couple months after this DIY project.

How to protect wooden strawberry planter?

Once you finish building this wooden strawberry planter, it is time to think about whether you want to seal the wood or not.

Because the board we used is interior/exterior grade, we didn’t bother with sealing the surface  (I have to admit we are always lazy at this step). After a whole season of rains, this strawberry planter did start to put on a weathered look. The wood color will turn gray, with some spots darker than the other.

It is still very sturdy, and we have been using it for two years already without any issue.

So this is a personal preference! If you like a very new look and are not a big fan of rustic style, you might want to seal the wood to preserve the color with a few coats of water based sealant.

Here are a few exterior grade wood sealers options:

Alternatively, it would also be fun to paint it a nice color using exterior paint on the outside, if you want it to match your garden color scheme.

I hope you enjoy this DIY tiered strawberry planter project and are ready to grow your strawberry plants vertically! Leave me a comment if you have any questions.

If you are interested in more budget friendly garden DIY projects, check out the posts linked right below.

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