About Us
Welcome to ModBOX, your ultimate destination for premium, sustainable raised garden beds. Proudly crafted in Australia, our modular garden beds are designed to enhance your gardening experience by offering versatility, durability, and eco-friendly materials.
Our Story
ModBOX was born in 2012 out of a passion for gardening and a desire to provide gardeners with high-quality, customisable solutions. We understand the challenges of finding the perfect garden bed that fits your space and meets your aesthetic and functional needs. That’s why we created ModBOX – to offer a wide range of shapes and sizes that can be tailored to any garden layout.
The Tree
From the sandhills of the Murray River, up through Western New South Wales and into Southern Queensland, the Australian Cypress – Callitris Glaucophilla -, slowly and quietly grows. Their grey-green foliage and furrowed, grey bark have been part of the landscape for ten thousand years. Over that time these hardy trees have adapted perfectly to hot, dry conditions. Their roots plunging deep into the soil to find moisture far below the surface.
Since people first discovered the Australian Cypress, it’s been highly prized. Australian Aborigines used its resins as adhesives and its bark to craft fibers. European settlers quickly fell in love with the trees too: its honey-colored timber, its fresh, lemony-pine aroma, its incredible durability, even in harsh Australian conditions. Today the Australian Cypress is renowned the world over as a premium Australian timber. A tree this good doesn’t grow overnight. It can take a whole generation for a young tree to mature. This is not the stuff of slash-and-burn commercial plantations, but patient, careful forestry.
When the Australian Cypress finally does come to the end of its quiet percolations, the result is a simply sublime tree. One that naturally repels termites and shuns rot, one that yields timber so hardy that chemical treatments are useless. One that does not shrink or decay in the soil, one that lasts decades upon decades, looks spectacular, and smells even better. In other words, every bit a tree worth waiting for.
The Mill
We’ve spent the last twelve years searching for the best sawmills in the country, and we found a winner. Our Australian Cypress is exclusively sourced from a family-owned and operated sawmill buried deep in central New South Wales. Since the early 1970s, the Grants have run the Ganmain Sawmill in Narrandera, on the Murrumbidgee, to the west of Wagga Wagga. A decade later they took charge of the second mill in Condobolin, close to Parkes in Central NSW. Both mills produce some of the finest quality Australian Cypress timber we’ve seen. From majestic, deep-rooted pine to strong, raw, beautiful beams, the Grants are master craftsmen.
The Workshop
From the sawmill, our timber finds its way, down south, across the Murray. Through bustling Melbourne and down to our Hastings workshop, tucked away on the scenic Mornington Peninsula. Like raw blocks of marble hewn from the Italian alps. Our thick-cut beams of Australian Cypress are hauled onto the shop floor overflowing with potential, waiting for human hands to draw it out. That’s where engineer Marco Baretta comes in.
The Engineer
Marco comes from a long line of gardeners, craftsmen, experimenters, and innovators. He’s also an Italian. A proper Italian. A born-in-Italy kind of Italian. For hundreds of years, the Baretta family have cultivated and cared for a sprawling veggie garden and enormous orchard on their country property outside Turin in Piedmont, northern Italy. For generations the Barettas spent every moment they could outdoors, in the garden, tending to their tomatoes, zucchini, basil, and pumpkins, building new wings for the homestead, and feasting on home-grown produce with the family on warm summer nights. Outdoor living is in Marco’s genes. Bringing this lifestyle to the empty patios and barren backyards of Australia is Marco’s calling. Marco’s ingeniously simple idea for making that happen is the ModBOX.
From our beautiful hunks of Australian Cypress, Marco carefully cuts his design for totally modular, interlocking planks. With laser precision, he drills holes and cuts his cleverly designed locks into the ends of each part. Once a set is cut, the pieces snap effortlessly together in any shape, configuration, and combination you can imagine.
The Flat-Packed Kit
There’s nothing like the satisfaction of building something with your own hands. It’s one of the reasons we got started with this whole business. But we’re not greedy – we want you to get some of that satisfaction. We’ll cut the planks perfectly to size, we’ll ship it to your front door, we’ll give you a guide to putting them together, but the rest is up to you. The ModBOX is your project as much as it’s ours. And there are dozens of projects this box can be part of: raised garden beds for herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, and strawberries, garden benches surrounded by flowerbeds, sandpits for the kids, cascading retaining walls.
Grow banana passionfruit vines all along the back fence, coriander around a tricky corner, basil beside the back steps. Add wheels, worm stations, and wicking systems to turn your front yard into a permacultural paradise. We’ll give you the tools, and even some inspiration – all you need is the idea.
The ModBOX Giveth
An outdoor project is a magnet for life. We’re not just talking about the pumpkins growing in your new garden bed. Once you put in your herbs, your sandpit, your worm station, or your bench, you’ll find yourself out in the fresh air more and more, gardening, harvesting, eating, reading, and watching. Friends and kids, butterflies and rosellas – life will slowly but steadily gravitate to your little patch of nature. Your first ModBOX is the thin edge of the wedge – we’re sure you’ll find that, like the Barettas, you’ll soon be addicted to life outdoors, in the garden, amongst the herbs and the vines.
Why Choose ModBOX?
- Premium Quality: Our garden beds are made from Callitris Cypress, a sustainably grown Australian timber known for its natural resistance to rot and termites. This ensures that your garden bed will last for decades without the need for chemical treatments.
- Customisable Designs: With ModBOX, you can choose from a variety of shapes and sizes to create a garden bed that perfectly fits your space. Whether you have a small balcony or a sprawling backyard, we have the solution for you.
- Easy Assembly: Our modular design allows for easy assembly without the need for power tools. Simply follow our step-by-step instructions to have your garden bed ready in minutes.
- Sustainable and Safe: We prioritise sustainability by using eco-friendly materials that are safe for growing food. Our garden beds are crafted to provide the best environment for your plants, protecting them from extreme temperatures and ensuring healthy growth.
Join the ModBOX Community
We love to see how our customers use ModBOX to transform their gardens. Share your gardening journey with us on social media and be inspired by the creativity of other ModBOX users.
Thank you for choosing ModBOX. We look forward to helping you create a garden that you will love and cherish.