Replacing a scattered pot collection with three runs of geometric Corten: House, against the foundation; Tall, at the patio edge framing the step down; and Low, a pair of boxes on each side of the Tall run. Thirteen steel vessels, built around the walkway that already runs through the middle.
Flagstone patio raised 6–8″ over decomposed granite, brick veneer with limestone accents, mature cenizo staying put.
Taken 13 September 2026, before any work. Embedded in the page rather than linked, so the board stays one file you can send to a fabricator.
Corten is the only new colour — everything else is sampled from what the yard is already built from. It moves through the first two chips over about eighteen months, and the year-one orange is louder against pale limestone than most people expect.
3 runs, 13 vessels. Geometric Corten — folded lips, crisp welds, standoff feet. IDs match drawings and Schedule.
Capped at 10″ by the exposed foundation. Eight inches of soil: barrels, red yucca and spillers.
H3 is centred in the step down. H5 is nearest the hose bib and shower plumbing, so it stays spineless.
Barrels and spillers. Nothing planted roots past the false floor, which saves 197 lb apiece.
Tall and narrow is tippy. Ballast the hollow bottom with gravel — it stands at the edge of a pool deck.
Same diameter as T2 so the pair reads as a frame; the height difference keeps it informal. Both rounds take compact, spineless planting.
Ten inches of soil means spillers and barrels only. The pool-side pair is 6″ from the flagstone, so pre-weather, seal and pitch them toward the walkway.
Set-out by hand on gravel runs ±1–2″; the margins absorb it. They need not match — 0″ at a tight shower corner and 4″ at the gate is fine. The 4″ is a budget.
Drawn to scale both ways, house at the top, pool deck at the bottom. Three runs: House, Tall and Low. Every vessel in a run is centred on the same spine.
Aerial view
Elevation, from the pool deck
Every vessel is here. The two 2″ shadow lines are too narrow to show anything. The middle house round sits dead centre of that 36″ opening, with 8″ of daylight either side.
This shows the feel; the drawings show the measures.
Planting follows the board’s own rules: three species used three times each, and the two threshold rounds carry spineless, compact things, because the 36″ clearance depends on it. Sun is south-west, late afternoon — high and to the right as you stand on the deck, so the shadows rake left across the run and a 16″ step casts something you can actually see. The limestone wall runs the full depth, house to deck — tall where the shower is, at mid-span, then down to counter height for the cooktop end. Drag to swing round; the buttons are the views worth having.
This view needs WebGL, which this browser has turned off or cannot run.
Nothing is lost — the aerial and plan views above carry every dimension. The 3D only answers whether the stepping reads.
Thirteen vessels, three runs, five shapes. The ID is the one on the drawings above: H the House run, T the Tall run, and the Low run split by side — W on the house side of Tall, P on the pool side — numbered gate to shower.
| ID | Shape | L × D × H | Soil | Fill | Loaded | Planting | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| H1 | House round | ◯20 × 10 | 8″ | 1.5 | 65 lb | red yucca | fabricate |
| H2 | House box | 34 × 24 × 10 | 8″ | 3.8 | 170 lb | golden barrels ×3 | fabricate |
| H3 | House round | ◯20 × 10 | 8″ | 1.5 | 65 lb | red yucca | fabricate |
| H4 | House box | 34 × 24 × 10 | 8″ | 3.8 | 170 lb | golden barrels ×3 | fabricate |
| H5 | House round | ◯20 × 10 | 8″ | 1.5 | 65 lb | red yucca · by the fixtures | fabricate |
| W1 | Low box | 48 × 10 × 12 | 10″ | 2.8 | 125 lb | red yucca | fabricate |
| W2 | Low box | 48 × 10 × 12 | 10″ | 2.8 | 125 lb | golden barrels ×3 | fabricate |
| T1 | Box | 36 × 30 × 28 | 15″ ff | 9.4 | 422 lb | golden barrels ×5 · spillers | fabricate |
| T2 | Round | ◯20 × 40 | 18″ ff | 3.3 | 147 lb | golden barrels ×3 · compact | fabricate |
| T3 | Round | ◯20 × 24 | 16″ | 2.9 | 131 lb | red yucca · spineless | fabricate |
| T4 | Box | 36 × 30 × 28 | 15″ ff | 9.4 | 422 lb | golden barrels ×5 · spillers | fabricate |
| P1 | Low box | 48 × 10 × 12 | 10″ | 2.8 | 125 lb | spillers only | fabricate |
| P2 | Low box | 48 × 10 × 12 | 10″ | 2.8 | 125 lb | red yucca | fabricate |
| Total · 13 vessels | 48 cu ft | ~2,160 lb | 24 bags of mix at 2 cu ft | ||||
Fill is cubic feet of mix; ff is a false floor, so the vessel is taller than its soil. Loaded weight is fill only, at 45 lb/cu ft — roughly half a conventional sandy mix, which is what makes a loaded 36″ box a reasonable thing to set on compacted decomposed granite at all. Every vessel takes shallow-rooted planting — barrels, red yucca, spillers — so nothing here needs more soil than it has. No agave, sotol or yucca.
| Item | Spec | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Material | Corten A / ASTM A606-4 | weathering steel, the real thing |
| Thickness | 10 gauge (~1/8″) minimum | thinner oil-cans and bows once loaded |
| Top edge | 1.5″ folded lip, every vessel | a sheared edge reads as DIY |
| Bracing | one internal cross-strap in every box (T1, T4, H2, H4, W1–2, P1–2) | a 34″+ unbraced side bellies out once loaded |
| Feet | 2″ standoff, every vessel | flat on grade traps water, floor rots first |
| Finish | pre-weather offsite, rinse until clear | keeps the bleed off your stone |
| False floors | T1, T4 at 15″ soil; T2 at 18″ | plants never root deeper; saves ~490 lb across the three |
| Sealer | Penetrol, exterior faces | holds the colour, stops the bleed |
| Lining | 1″ rigid XPS, west + south interior faces of T1–T4 | steel exceeds 150°F here |
| Item | Quantity | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Mix · 70% pumice or expanded shale, 20% DG, 10% compost | ~48 cu ft · 24 bags of 2 cu ft | not potting soil, not local clay; drains, and weighs half |
| Road base | 4″ compacted under every footprint | uncompacted DG under a 600 lb box tilts |
| Gravel | 4″ under every open bottom · ballast for T2 | drainage; weight down low |
| 1″ rigid XPS | west + south interior faces, T1–T4 | steel exceeds 150°F here |
| Penetrol | exterior faces, every vessel | holds the colour, stops the bleed |
Six things that will go wrong slowly and expensively if ignored. None is optional, and none is visible on a drawing.
Late October planting gives roots a mild season before summer. Steel is not ordered until the list below is closed.
| Phase | When | Gate |
|---|---|---|
| Close the list above, order steel | September | fixtures and drain located |
| Site prep, road base, set all thirteen | Late Sept – October | steel delivered, pre-weathered and rinsed clear |
| Fill and plant | Late October | out of the heat |
| Divide the yucca and move it off the walkway | Late October | after bloom · not into a vessel |
How the design got here, rather than what it is. Kept because the reasoning matters if something has to change; folded because none of it is needed to build the thing.
Three rounds of drawing it to scale. Kept short, because what matters now is what gets built — but each change was forced by something, not chosen.
| Was | Became | Because |
|---|---|---|
| 54 box · 48 walk · 31 box + 15 + ◯18 | — | It did not fit. The handoff recorded “54 + 48 + 54 = 156 ✓”, but the right-hand group is 31 + 15 + 18 = 64″ — the breathing gap was never counted. 166″ into a 156″ span. |
| planters against the house | along the patio edge | The strip measured 148″, not the 5 ft the brief feared. The open ground stopped being leftover and became the walkway, and the planters came to flank the step-down at the step. |
| heights 22 / 12 / 34 | 28 / 40 / 24 / 18 | The patio sits 6–8″ up. A 12″ box shows 7″ of steel from the deck and effectively vanishes. Everything gained ~6″ so the ladder arrives where you actually stand. |
| one round, off to one side | two rounds framing the threshold | A box presents a flat face for its whole depth; a circle pinches on one line. 36″ between rounds opens to 48″ within nine inches — and it turns the round from an orphan into a motif. |
| 48″ walkway | 36″ | Bought the width for the rounds. Holds ~34″ of real clearance provided the two threshold rounds are planted with spineless, compact things — that condition is doing the work. |
| nothing against the house | a 24″ bed — ⌀20, 34×24, ⌀20, 34×24, ⌀20, all 10″ h | The depth was measured at 148″, not the ~5 ft the brief feared. Depth was never the constraint, and the bed alone clears the weep course. Four 6″ gaps keep the drainage route open through it. |
| one flat height line at the patio edge | a 48 × 10 × 12″ low box in front of each end box | Breaks the line seen from the room. 48 = 36 + 2 + 10, so each box dies on its round’s centreline rather than lining up with anything — which is why it reads as a separate layer, not a plinth. |
| right-hand box at 18″ | 28″, matching the left | 12″ in front of 18″ is a 6″ step — a thicker base, not a tier. At 28″ the drop is 16″ both sides. Nearly free: a taller box gets a false floor, so fill goes down (10.0 → 9.4 cu ft) and you buy ~52 lb of steel. |
| a 10″ DG reveal | 6″, with a second pair of low boxes filling it | The reveal read as dead space because nothing was in it. Filling beats shrinking. It cannot go to 2″: the reveal is the drip line, and splash off a 14″ face carries 6–12″ onto flagstone that will not scrub. The 4″ came out of the walkway, not the planting. |
| rounds front-aligned to their bands | every vessel in a run centred on one spine | Their centres sat 2″ (house) and 5″ (pool) ahead of the rectangles’. The pool rounds now carry 5″ of DG front and back instead of 0 and 10, so they no longer touch the low boxes — a shadow line, not a mass. |
The brief’s own figure: 48″ of steel yielded “roughly 40″ of real clearance” once planting filled in — so agave and yucca eat about 8″. At 36″ that would leave 28″, and this route is walked wet and barefoot with spines either side.
Put golden barrel, hesperaloe or a tight echeveria in the two rounds that flank the step and encroachment there drops to about 2″, leaving ~34″. The agaves and yuccas go in the boxes, outboard, where they can spread.
This is a planting decision that a dimension depends on. If a spiny anchor ends up in a threshold round later, the walkway quietly becomes 28″ and nobody will connect the two.
148″ pool deck to brick veneer. The brief was braced for 5 ft; it is 12 ft 4 in, which is what makes a bed at the house and a run at the patio edge possible at all. The stack today is on the aerial: 2 · 24 · 66 · 10 · 30 · 10 · 6.
The 16–18″ fallback is dead. The handoff expected depths would have to shrink and warned that a 30″ box in a 5 ft strip leaves 24″ of walkway. At 148″ there is no such squeeze — a 24″ bed at the house, 30″ planters at the edge and a 10″ low box on each face of them still leave a 66″ walkway. Keep the depths as designed.
The weep course is safe by geometry. The 6″ minimum air gap was the constraint most likely to cause an expensive problem years later. The 34″ foundation bed clears it six times over on its own — provided nothing is built in the bed. That moves from a thing to get right to a thing to simply not break.
Standing on the flagstone you are 10″ above the ground the planters sit on — measured, not the 7″ first assumed — and the 2″ standoff feet give a little back. Net, every piece loses 8″ of apparent height from the view that matters most. The heights were raised to absorb it:
| Vessel | Box | Top of steel +2″ feet |
From the deck −10″ rise |
|---|---|---|---|
| T2 · round, tall | 40″ | 42″ | 32″ |
| T1, T4 · boxes | 28″ | 30″ | 20″ |
| T3 · round, short | 24″ | 26″ | 16″ |
| W, P · low boxes | 12″ | 14″ | 4″ |
Seen from the deck the tall run reads 20 · 32 | 16 · 20, arriving where you actually stand rather than where the drawing was made. At the brief’s original 12 / 22 / 34 heights the low box would have shown 4″ of steel and the whole run would have sat under the deck line.
Against the house the steel had a metre of gravel between it and any stone. At the patio edge it bleeds directly onto cream flagstone for 12–18 months, and that does not come off. The spec said “at least two of” the three mitigations. At this position, do all three: pre-weather and rinse offsite until the runoff runs clear, Penetrol the exterior faces, and keep the 6″ DG reveal at the curb. Pitch every top surface to drain to the walkway side, away from the stone.
The reveal is doing two jobs at once, which is why it is worth the inches: it is the rust-catch band the spec asks for, and it is the gap that stops the steel reading as a retaining wall bolted to the patio.
A 28″ box on the DG stands 20″ above the deck once the 2″ feet are counted — a low bench, at the edge of a pool deck, next to a step down. Someone will sit on it, wet, whether or not it is meant for sitting. That is an argument for the 1.5″ folded top lip being non-negotiable rather than a nicety, and for keeping spined plants back from the lip on the patio side.
70% pumice or expanded shale · 20% decomposed granite · 10% compost. Not potting soil, and not local clay. The per-vessel figures are in the Schedule.
At 45 lb/cu ft this mix is roughly half the weight of a conventional sandy mix, which is what makes a loaded 36″ box a reasonable thing to set on compacted decomposed granite at all — 422 lb rather than the 840 it would otherwise be. Minimum 14″ soil depth; open bottoms over 4″ of gravel with weep holes at the base course.
Pick three species and use each at least three times — a collection reads as a collection until things repeat — and all of them shallow-rooted, because no vessel here is deep. Which plant goes where is the Planting column of the Schedule.
The anchors the brief started with, and all three root deep. Every vessel here holds 8–18″ of soil, so the planting is shallow-rooted throughout. The existing yucca is divided to clear the walkway, not moved into a vessel.
Tough, spineless, long bloom, entirely at home here. The safe choice next to a barefoot route where agave and yucca are not.
You already have several, scattered. Clustered in odd-numbered groups they become a feature; spread out singly they are what makes the current bed read as a collection of one-offs.
Breaking the top line is what stops a Corten box looking like a shipping crate. Everything here roots shallow by design, so spillers carry the softness the anchors would have.
The Pilosocereus, the monkey tail (Cleistocactus colademononis) and the sansevieria are frost-tender and will not survive an Austin hard freeze planted out. They stay in their own pots, set into the vessels among the planting so they read as planted, and lift out whole when a freeze is forecast. The tall run has the depth for it; a 16″ pot sinks to its rim in T1 or T4. The leaning Pilosocereus needs staking or repotting now — before it snaps — regardless of anything else here.
Drawn before the house bed became H1–H5. The section below still shows the earlier 34″ bed, a 74″ walkway and a 10″ reveal. It is kept for the argument — repeat the anchors, one ground plane — not for its numbers; those are in Fit.
Six courses of modular brick is about 16″. That bed is not background — it is the other half of the room, and it is what decides whether this reads as one garden with a path through it or two unrelated things facing off.
Everything above lands on one datum: the bed at 16″, the low box 4″ proud of it at 20″, then a clear jump to 30″ and 42″. That 4″ is deliberate — matching the bed exactly would mean a 14″ box, and a 14″ box holds 12″ of soil, which puts us back under the minimum. Across 66″ of walkway nobody reads 4″.
In order of how much each one buys you.
Put the same three species in the bed that go in the planters. That is the brief's own rule — pick three, use each at least three times — applied across the path rather than along it. It is what makes you read the walkway as passing through one garden instead of between two separate ones. Costs nothing, and no amount of material matching substitutes for it.
Top-dress the bed with the same gravel used at the base of the planters, in the same size and colour. A single unbroken floor from the brick to the patio curb does more for coherence than anything vertical, because it is the surface your eye actually travels along.
A third round — same 20″ diameter, shorter still, say 16″ — set in the bed roughly opposite the threshold. One repeated object ties two sides better than any amount of edging.
Weaker argument than it was. With two rounds now framing the step, the circle is already a motif rather than an orphan — so this is a nice-to-have that reaches the tie across the walkway, not the thing that establishes it. Skip it if three rounds starts to feel like a collection.
Keep it clear of the weep course and off the brick, same as everything else.
Under the roof overhang at the shower end. The eaves give the frost-tender pots real protection on a hard night, the shade suits them, and it stops the niche eating into the walkway. The Pilosocereus, the monkey tail and the sansevieria all live there.
The hose bib, the irrigation valve box and the shower plumbing are all in or near this bed and have to stay reachable. No agave or yucca within arm's reach of any of them — you will be kneeling there in the dark eventually. Hesperaloe is the anchor that does the job without the terminal spines.
The bed speaks the house's language — brick, coursed, matching the veneer. The planters speak the garden's. Re-facing the bed in steel picks a fight between them and loses the thing that makes the Corten read as inserted rather than as construction.
Let the plants and the ground do the tying. The two materials are allowed to stay different if everything growing out of them is the same.