About: Hi I'm Michael! I love all things Science, Engineering, & 3D Printing. If you've enjoyed my work then I've love to hear from you!

Barrel gardens are really good at two things compared to other gardens:

1. Reducing water consumption by catching excess water that can be reused.

2. Cramming a lot of plants into a small space.

Being an apartment dweller that second point really sealed the deal for me. I LOVE spending time outside gardening, but I simply do not own any land. A barrel with pockets is a great way to get my gardening fix in a small package. This design gave me the opportunity to have a garden in my 'backyard' where I otherwise would not have been able to have one.

This particular barrel garden design is multi-functional. As you can see, the stand it normally sits on can also be used to cover the barrel making it into a stool and place to store your gardening gear in the off season.

Many barrel gardens have a pipe section placed in the center as a composting bin and home for earth worms. I decided that this addition was not worth the extra trouble of adding it nor the added time spent using & cleaning it out. Composing is messy work.

This project has actually been a year in the making. Most of the photos shown are from my garden last year, but the cool thing is that now I have photos of the beginning & end of the garden as well as some return on investment calculations to show for the project. I've since moved to a new apartment with an inadequate deck and have had the barrel in stool mode ever since.

Since I'd like to do a little gardening this year I decided to design an even smaller version: A 3D printable herb garden pot! This model has been printed and verified to function as intended.

NOTE: I am not a professional gardener by anyone's definition. This is something that I enjoy and have experimented with a bit, but there are still many gaps in my knowledge of gardening. Please feel free to leave your own ideas for improvement on the barrel design, plant choices, soil composition, or whatever!