Wick Trough 280

The numbers

Size

280 mm long, 145 mm wide, 185 mm tall

Made to your size

length, 200 to 300 mm

What stays as drawn

Rectangular outline, fused liner and lid, and a 45 mm liner stand-off. Check the editor's growing chamber when choosing a size.

Lead time

9 to 12 days

Made of

PETG, printed shell, fused liner and lid, and drainage feet

Colours

unpigmented natural, warm white, pale sand, slate grey (pale sand as standard)

Water

Round liner drainage holes above a deeper reservoir, with 45 mm drainage feet. Lift out the liner and lid to empty and rinse the shell.

Tray

No tray

Where it lives

Indoors

Weight

720 g empty

These are the figures the piece is drawn to rather than measurements taken off a finished one. Send the pot it has to replace and we will move them.

What it suits

A shared trough means a shared watering regime. Do not mix a fern and a Hoya in one.

Why it is that shape

The rectangular outer form is retained, with the same fused-lid reservoir construction as the rest of the self-watering family.

Looking after it

Lift the liner and lid out together to empty and rinse the reservoir. Choose a growing medium that draws water from below, and monitor it before relying on the reservoir while away.

Pigments fade under sustained sunlight. Not sold as colourfast.

Three parts, and only one of them changes

Most planters are one object. The wall, the floor, the drainage and the look are all the same piece of material, so changing anything about the outside means redrawing the inside too, including the parts that decide whether a plant lives.

Ours come apart into three. The liner is the pot the plant is actually in. The seat ring holds it. The shell is the decorative part, and it is the only one that changes between designs.

That split is not a manufacturing convenience. It is why we can draw a new shell on a Tuesday and have it sit on a liner that has already been through a hundred plants.

The whole range · Which one suits your plant

The liner, which is the part that keeps a plant alive

The liner holds the medium, the roots and the water. Its floor, its drainage, the draft on its wall and the fill line inside it are the same whatever the outside is doing. Once a liner is right at a given size, it stops changing.

The practical effect for somebody who owns one: you can buy a different shell next year and keep the liner the plant has already rooted into. Redecorating stops being a repotting job.

It also means the numbers on a size sheet are real. The growing chamber on every product here is measured to the fill line rather than to the rim, which is why it never agrees with the outer dimensions and why it is the number worth reading.

Column Pot 140 · Pan Pot 200 · Why roots need air

The water under the floor

On a self-watering pot there is a void under the liner, and it holds the water. The plant draws from it through a wick, so the medium stays evenly damp instead of swinging between drenched and bone dry. For a pothos, a peace lily or a fern that sulks the moment it dries, that swing is the thing that was hurting it.

It is also the feature that is wrong for more plants than it is right for. A cactus, a succulent, a Hoya or a Cattleya wants the opposite: wet for an hour, then air. Every plant guide on this site says which of the two you have, plainly, at the top of the page.

And a reservoir that can only be topped up is a trap. Salt arrives with every fill and leaves with none, collecting towards the top of the root ball where the fine roots are. That is why ours has a plug in the bottom of it.

Flush Vessel 180 · Pothos, where a reservoir helps · Cacti, where it does not

The seat ring, which is the whole trick

Between the liner and the shell there is a ring. Its inside is bored to the liner. Its outside is drawn to the shell. It is an adaptor, and it is the smallest, fastest part in the whole assembly.

A new shell costs a new ring and not a new liner. That single sentence is the concept.

It is why a made-to-order range can carry a lot of designs without becoming unreliable. The risky, fussy, horticulturally load-bearing part is printed from a drawing that has not moved in months. The part that is new is the part that only has to look good.

Start from a drawing and change everything

The mesh that holds the substrate up

The floor of the liner is open. It has to be, or water and air cannot move through the root ball, but an open floor over a tank of water is also a way to lose half your mix into the reservoir on the first watering.

So the floor is a mesh, sized to hold a normal potting mix while letting the wick and the air through. The grade matters: fine enough for compost, open enough that it does not blind over with fines and turn into a sealed plate in the second year.

What a mix is measured on

Where the water goes in

A pour opening in the side takes water straight into the reservoir without running it through the medium. That matters more than it sounds: filling from the top every time keeps the surface of the mix permanently wet, which is where fungus gnats breed and where the crust of salt shows up first.

A float rod shows the level from across the room, and an overflow port means the pot cannot be filled past the line even by somebody who is not paying attention. Both of those are there because the person watering is usually in a hurry.

Flush Vessel 180

The same pot in a different shell

The shell is the only part that changes between designs, so this liner sits just as happily inside flutes and ribs, plates standing off the wall, contour bands, quilting, a field of domes or a wave pushed through the whole thing — and the outline underneath them moves too. Every one of them opens in the editor at this pot’s own size.

See what a shell can be

The rest of the Self-watering pots

• Flush Vessel 180 180 mm across, 205 mm tall

The whole range Pots by design Find it by plant How these are built