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The real aging process of the cast iron Versailles planter boxes from the Orangerie of the Palace of

All the pictures in this blog were taken by us and belongs to the original planters that you can find at the Orangerie of the Palace of Versailles.

Buying Versailles planter boxes is an investment and sometimes before buying many of the customers are worried about the investment and about the natural aging of the versailles planters for outdoor use.

So they want to know if the outdoor weather will damage the planters in anyway, and they also want to know what should they expect about rusted metal parts, or about the life of a wood panel.

Sometimes the customers expect things that are not real and that does not represent the spirit of the original versailles planter, so we usually explained them how the parts of the planters we manufacture are treated and painted trying to follow the original concept but using the best materials from this century.

So the frame of the planter box now is trated with a coat of zinc for all the metal parts, and then it is painted with powder coating, and the side panels made of wood are hand paited as the originals, so sometimes we have to explain that the wooden side panels are not lacquered kitchen cabinets.

So we decided to write a few lines to show to any potential customers a few pictures of the original planters from the Orangerie of the Palace of Versailles to show them that these planters are strong, beautiful and amazing but they are not perfectly painted and polished as a new luxury car that comes out of a factory.

The Château de Versailles tree-box owes its reputation to its superior quality materials and unique technical specifications, resulting in an entirely French-made art-craftsmanship piece that even with the harsh climate from France in outdoors exposure and may lasts up to 150 years, and this does not mean that the outdoor weather won't start immediately a slow or fast process of aging all parts.

These days many people is mainly affected by fake instagram photos showing an inexistent perfections, and if you have the chance to see the hole picture of an instagram post you will find out that a real photo many times also includes a real, messy, unglamorous details that nobody wants to show on their feeds.

When we started building this planters we noticed that the ones at the Orangerie of Versailles were originally made from cast iron, which suffers a lot in outdoor situation, so we replaced 90% of the metal parts by cast aluminum alloy and we finally developed a high end Versailles Planter box using the best possible materials and processes while respecting the orginal design and proportions of the original planters built 400 years ago by Andre Le Notre the gardener of the king Louis XIV for the Orangerie and gardens of the Palace of Versailles.

Instagram rarely shows the hole frame of a real photo and not always represents real life situations. Most of all Instagram users spend a long time carefully curating their feeds, adding the right filter, or photoshopped out a not so beautiful imperfection.

So many times the hole picture shows that there's quite a lot of unwated things in the background.

Here are a few pictures of the real Versailles Planters from the Orangerie of The Palace of Versailles with nice detailed close up to see everything that goes on behind the scenes too.

The natural aging process ads a beautiful touch to this planters and we love it, because this is the way it has to be.

In the picture above you can see versailles planters form the orangerie of versailles with less than 3 years old and you start seeing a few rusted pieces caused by the natural aging process.

The original planters have the bottom floor made from pieces of wood that sooner or later will end up rotten like its clearly shown here.

In our version of the planters we have the metal crossbar but we made a second layer of a floor instead of using wood we made it of aluminum with many holes for good draining to avoid this issue.


What to expect about the natural weather caused aging process of our versailles planters?


Depending on the climate in your area, whether it is very humid and cold or if it is very dry and hot, different signs of the normal aging process of Versailles pots can be expected.


In the case of very dry or hot places with a lot of sun, the appearance of black fungus stains on the wooden side panels will be slower and not very visible, on the contrary, in shady places or places with a lot of cold or snow where If there is little sun, it is more likely that if the wood is not cleaned regularly every three or six months, especially in autumn and winter, black spots of moisture fungus will form in less than a year.




To try to avoid or delay this, we recommend doing what they do in Versailles, which is to store them in a covered place where the weather is less hostile during the fall and winter season.



Photo from Le Parisien, Orangerie chateau de Versailles