It’s never too late in the season to get your green thumb groove on. So, what are your gardening goals? Decorative floral boxes to bookend your front entrance? A tiered, year-round herb garden for the patio? Or maybe you want to get a head start on next year by building raised garden beds now? That way you can plant veggies as soon as the soil warms come springtime. So what should you look for when choosing the best building material for year-round planters?

Regardless of your planting designs and deadlines, you need a top-performing building material for your cultivation container. That’s where pressure treated Southern Yellow Pine (SYP) comes in. Time and time again, seasoned DIYers with horticulture experience turn to pressure treated SYP because they know it’s a smart and safe choice for garden bed structures. Here’s why:

5 Reasons to Use Pressure Treated Wood for Your Garden Bed Structures

Photo courtesy of April Wilkerson

Natural Building Materials Look Great

Whether your garden is decorative or edible, wood is the perfect material to really highlight the beauty of your greenery. That’s because it’s a natural material that harmonizes perfectly with plant life, underscoring the connection of the natural world around us. Warm textured SYP, in particular, really showcases flowers and flora beautifully, providing a perfect canvas for foliage.

Photo courtesy of April Wilkerson

Easy Building Material to Work With

You don’t need to be a wood whisperer to create beautiful planter boxes with SYP. Builders of all skill sets enjoy working with this incredibly versatile building material, from home improvement pros to DIY newbies. It’s easy on the tools and holds fasteners exceptionally well, so it’s ideal for all your projects.

Best Building Material for the Environment 

Gardening is a great way of connecting and respecting the awesome beauty that is nature, so it only stands to reason that you want a green choice for your planter box. From cradle to grave, using wood such as SYP, instead of manmade materials benefits climate stabilization in a number of ways. 

In fact, wood actually captures carbon from the atmosphere as opposed to emitting it like synthetic materials do. Plus, SYP is harvested from sustainably managed forests where millions of new trees are planted every year.

Lasts Longer than Untreated Materials

Due to its cellular structure, SYP is the preferred species of wood for Ground Contact pressure treatment. This safe, natural preserve ensures that any project you make with SYP will last longer and therefore leaves a smaller footprint compared to untreated materials, which need to be replaced more often.

Photo courtesy of April Wilkerson

Durable Enough to Retain Dirt 

Even if your planter box is fairly shallow, soil, especially moist soil, can put a lot of pressure on the walls of your structure. Ergo, you need a strong, stable material, and SYP is a particularly dense wood. So, it’s great for building sturdy, dependable boxes. It’s also great for standing up to the elements 365 days of the year.