subject: Fibreglass Planters - An Unplanned But Happy Marriage [print this page] Fibreglass is one of the wonder-materials of the twentieth century and, at last, it is coming into its own as a material for garden designers, interior designers and landscape architects.
Fibreglass is strong, durable, lightweight, waterproof and, if well-designed, beautiful. Thinking of it as 'plastic' may have delayed its use in gardens. But glass fibre and resin (made from cellulose) are as natural as cut stone, sawn timber and many of the other materials used to make gardens.
The history of fibreglass in design began in Britain during the Second World War. It was used for radar domes because microwaves can pass through it. Since then fibreglass has been used for boat building, the Reliant Robin car, baths, hot tubs, water tanks and surfboards - all uses which show the strength and durability of fibreglass.
Fibreglass Pots is a compound of thin glass fibres with strong epoxy resins. Natural resins have a lovely smell and harden to produce amber, as found on the shores of the Baltic Sea and used to make jewellery. Natural resins are hydrocarbon secretions, typically from coniferous trees. Synthetic resins have the same chemistry, a different smell, great strength and great durability. In thin layers they bend. Reinforced with glass fibres they produce a rigid material known as Glass Reinforced Plastic (GRP), Glasfaserverstrkter Kunststoff (GFK) - or Fibreglass.
But how should fibreglass be used in garden design? Modernist designers called for honesty and 'Truth to Materials'. They despised earlier designers who had, for example, made cast iron columns resemble stone columns and concrete slabs resemble stone slabs. It is nice to use new materials in new ways but there is also a long tradition of using new materials in old ways. Greek statues, for example, were originally made in marble. This was great. But so are bronze statues, lead statues and fibreglass statues. Let us consider how the two approaches apply to fibreglass garden planters.
Traditional fibreglass urns, vases and planters
Fibreglass is used to make traditionally-shaped planters with the modern virtues of being lightweight, frost-proof and long-lasting. Fibreglass urns can look like terracotta urns - just as the early terracotta urns were made on the pattern of marble urns. Or fibreglass can be made to look like the marble originals. A famous example of this is the Warwick Vase. The marble original was made for the Roman Emperor Hadrian and was found, in 1771, in his villa at Tivoli. It was extensively repaired, brought to England and placed in the garden of Warwick Castle. Smaller copies were made in bronze, silver and lead. The original was sold to the Burrell Collection in 1978 - but a full size fibreglass copy has been installed in Warwick Castle. It is very fine - and proves the suitability of fibreglass for making vases, urns and planters in classical forms.
Modern fibreglass urns, vases and planters
To the modernists who demand truth to materials, we can ask 'What forms should Fibreglass planters be true to?' The answer, surely, would be 'abstract shapes with clean modern lines'. And fibreglass is extremely well suited to this type of design. Fibreglass can be sleek, elegant, polished, reflective - and modular. Classical planters, though sometimes used in lines and groups, are fundamentally free-standing items. Modern planters work extremely well as modules. They can form assemblies, arrays, patterns and other groupings. They help garden and landscape designers in their fundamental role: the creation and design of outdoor space.
