"We were awarded a contract to supply, plant, and maintain light post baskets in our historic downtown area. We were concerned about heat and wind drying out ordinary baskets, so we asked Karl and his gang shipped us a couple of demo baskets. After seeing the heft and quality that went into them, we figured we had our baskets. We were not disappointed!
We expect our summers to have several periods of a week or more of 100+ heat and 20 mph winds. We use the 28" Wrap Around baskets for downtown and leave the outer shells up all winter; winters that get down to -35 degrees. This is our 4th year of having them up and the baskets look the same as the day we put them out. We plant supertunias and water at most every other day, even when the temps get above 100 and have not experienced any issues. Most are on 8" posts, but we have one on a 12" post so with a little angle iron, all thread bars, and some nuts, we were easily able to expand the mounting brackets to accommodate the larger post.
We also use the Wrap Arounds and 23" H2O Labor Savors along with some 4x4 timbers to dress up the chain link fences that are around our nursery yard. Now we not only get regular compliments about the downtown baskets but also about our fence baskets. For the Wrap Arounds we mount half of the basket to the post using the standard mounting brackets on every other pole and our raggedy, 56-year-old chain link fence looks almost brand new. For our 23" baskets we couldn't find ready-made basket brackets that were listed to take the upwards of 40 lbs. that a fully wet basket could weigh so we got some industrial shelf brackets with an eye bolt attached for the baskets to hang on.
We sell pre-planted 16" weekenders to customers at around $60. Nearby those baskets we always try to have an empty basket so our sales team can show the inner and outer baskets. With that and the quality of our plants and the baskets, these are easy sells.
The one thing I think Karl and his group could do better is let people know the advantages of heat protection on the roots that the double basket provides. Along with the water reservoir, the insulating factor the double baskets give is why we don't worry about the extreme heat our part of the country seems to excel in producing in great quantities."
- Art Smith, East Pierre Garden Center
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