It’s safe to say that Urban Dirt Co. is Durable Green Bed’s No. 1 fan. And we certainly are fans of Urban Dirt Co., because she puts edible chef’s garden beds filled with delicious food in many places where they should belong. but often aren’t: public spaces, corporate campuses, schools, hotels, restaurant culinary gardens, and other similar places. And it’s the fact that Durable GreenBeds last for 20-25+ years that has helped make her business successful—she doesn’t doivent remplacer les lits de sitôt (20-25 ans!) Et l'entretien consiste à recolorer la garniture supérieure tous les 2 ans environ.
Piper Klee-Waddle (Owner of Urban Dirt Co.) designs, builds, installs, and maintains edible gardens. Her “stomping grounds” are in North Texas, an environment where she said building raised beds with wood just did not make sense.
Piper a découvert Durable GreenBeds il y a quelques années lorsqu'un collègue paysagiste d'un autre État lui en a parlé. Son amie utilisait du cèdre pour les parterres de jardin, mais avait découvert un lit de jardin alternatif fait de composite béton déchiqueté. “I researched it, I emailed Durable GreenBeds for a goûter,” Piper says. “I loved it.”
Custom Raised Garden Beds For Commercial Chef’s Garden Use
Piper dit que ses clients pour les jardins de chefs commerciaux lui avaient posé des questions sur lits surélevés commerciaux fait d'autre chose que du cèdre, quelque chose qui avait l'air plus commercial et substantiel, alors elle cherchait déjà une alternative, et Durable GreenBeds faisait l'affaire.
“Most of my commercial accounts were looking for something other than cedar because they didn’t want what they were referring to as ‘the homeowner version’ of a garden box,” Piper says. “My clients like the industrial look of the Durable GreenBeds and they like the fact that it’s never going to fall apart. They don’t care about the price because they know they don’t ever have to replace it.”
Because her clients didn’t want wood, Piper had been planning to shape forms and pour concrete for garden beds. But once she received her sample in the mail and showed it to everyone who had asked for a wood alternative, they were sold.
“Once they could feel it and see it, they liked it,” she says. “It’s interesting and different. Corporations don’t want cedar because the perception is it’s for decks, not for garden boxes.”
Piper en est à sa cinquième année de gestion de jardins de chefs comestibles pour ses entreprises clientes. Après quelques années en affaires, elle savait qu'elle devait réorganiser son objectif, elle passait donc son temps de travail à gérer les plantes et non à gérer l'installation et l'entretien des plates-bandes.
“I want to install the beds, put the plants in, and take care of the plants,” Piper says. “I can’t spend the time on installation or maintenance; there’s just not enough margin for the amount of time it takes.” The Durable Green Bed kits, easy to assemble with all the pieces, and using standard tools, make installation easy, and save on labor, as well as maintenance.
Les lits de jardin surélevés à vie sont la base du succès
The success of Piper’s landscaping and gardening business depends on getting the “bang for her buck” that a one-time installation of a lit de jardin résistant delivers. In North Texas, as in many parts of the country where high humidity and rainfall take a toll on anything wood outdoors, Piper says cedar raised garden beds only last two or three seasons. Even if the wood doesn’t actually rot and fall apart, it looks terrible— patiné, gray, and worn out looking, pulling apart at the corners. That’s a look her high-end clients don’t want.
“I can’t spend that kind of time on maintenance, I have to focus on the plants,” Piper says. “When you add in the cost of replacing the cedar boards every two or three years to keep them looking nice versus the cost of buying this one time thing, it just doesn’t make sense to do it any other way.”
De plus, en raison des pénuries de bois et de la demande accrue due à la pandémie, le cèdre n'est pas bon marché en ce moment. En fait, le Association nationale des constructeurs de maisons rapporte que jeles prix du bois ont grimpé de 50% entre le 17 avril et juillet.
Two years ago, Piper installed Durable GreenBeds at a very modern, mid-century home, where the homeowner originally used cedar. “But they just didn’t look good there,” Piper says. “I installed Durable GreenBeds and they still look great. They stay nice and clean. It literally looks like we installed them last week and it’s been two summers.”
Durable GreenBeds don’t just look like a concrete planter box. They have a unique texture, and they can be painted or sealed to customize their appearance. Piper stained one set of raised garden beds a branded lime green. “You can see them from the highway!” she says. “I haven’t had to repaint those and that was also an installation from two summers ago.”
The tops of the concrete boxes are wood, and that does need to be resealed occasionally, but that’s just a small strip of wood. The corners are joined with an attractive gray metal bracket, which Piper says “are pretty fancy themselves.”
“The corners don’t bend, they don’t rust, they’re painted with a high grade baked on paint, so, you know, nothing ever happens to them,” she says. “I had a landscaper with a lawnmower run into it and it dented the bracket, but it would have crushed a cedar bed.”
Meilleur matériau pour les lits de jardin surélevés
When Piper is introducing this material to a potential client, she sells them on three things: “The longevity, so I don’t have to replace them. I tell a developer or a project manager it’s a 20-25-year product. All you’re going to be paying me for is plants. I can customize the colors, I can paint it. That’s that gives me a lot.”
Because her beds are placed in high-traffic public areas, she had some concern that people would be able to damage the boxes somehow, but that has not proven to be the case. “Someone could pull out the plants, but they can’t do anything to these boxes, they can’t mess them up, they’re literally that durable,” she says.
Une autre chose qui a vendu Piper sur les produits est le service client. Elle dit qu'elle fait beaucoup de recherches pour trouver des fournisseurs pour ses produits et qu'elle dépend des personnes qui répondent rapidement avec des informations importantes comme les listes de prix. Piper dit que Tom Van Denend, le propriétaire et fabricant de Durable GreenBeds, est généreux avec ses informations.
“He’s never told me that anything I’ve asked is proprietary or that I can’t share anything,” remarks Piper. “He’s always been super encouraging and helpful and in fact he gives me ideas for people to call who might want more boxes! So even if there was something else out there that was comparable or interesting, which I don’t know of, it’s going to be my first presentation to use Durable GreenBeds as a premium commercial garden box.”
