Posted: 20th July 2021 by Ian Collins

WaterUps^® has been working with Plantabox for the last year to provide efficient watering solutions for public spaces in several NSW local councils areas, including Randwick, Blacktown, Campbelltown, Northern Beaches and North Sydney and Horsham in Victoria. Plantabox are specialists in bringing living gardens into the built environment with their wicking planters and ‘pop-up’ green spaces. WaterUps^® were able to significantly reduce the cost of incorporating self-watering into Plantabox’s planters. At the same time we were also able to improve the water use efficiency with our system, compared to the wicking bed technologies that Plantabox had used previously.

An increasing number of councils are looking more closely at their public spaces and acknowledging the benefits of community greening. The WaterUps^® system provides significant advantages in lowering ongoing cost of maintaining street planters. We are pleased to advise that we are already working with Plantabox on another new project in Sydney involving the roll out of 70 new street planters.

The advantages of urban greening are well documented. Plants play a significant role in filtering airborne pollutants, in contributing to carbon sequestration and in providing sound buffering. They also help offset the ‘heat island’ effects. In built environments, container gardening solutions incorporating wicking systems are being increasingly mandated by architects and city planners.

A Chicago based study in 2013 by Back, Dawson and Jarrell conducted at sites within the ‘heat-island’ of Chicago, to test plant survival and growth in planters with wicking systems concluded that the planters

“... were successful as a low maintenance greening system for urban residents. The plant material tested had high survival rates through the growing season, and the planter systems themselves required no additional watering after initial setup. Although perennials and woody plants were the test species in this study, the system planters lend themselves to use with annuals as well and could be utilized by urban residents to grow selected vegetables.”

The Plantabox planters in the photos below were based on the WaterUps^® Oasis 1240 bed. Click here to check out this product.