Custom Metal Fabrication for Landscape Architects
Most landscape packages contain at least one element that doesn’t exist in a catalogue. A planter sized to close a paving module cleanly. A bench that has to follow a curve. A screen with a pattern drawn to match the architecture. A scupper detail that a supplier will quote as “closest standard unit.”
TrussMetal is a custom metal fabrication shop in North Vancouver. We work from drawings — plan, section, detail, or a sketch on trace — and fabricate the piece that was specified rather than the nearest thing in stock. Custom dimensions, custom profiles, and elements that have to interface with concrete, stone, timber and planting rather than sit on a level pad on their own.
If you have a detail that keeps getting value-engineered out because nobody will price it properly, send it. We’d rather look at it at design development than at tender.
When the Catalogue Doesn’t Have It
Catalogue site furniture works when the site is generic. Most aren’t.
The dimension is wrong. The planter needs to be 2,340 mm to close a run, and the catalogue jumps from 1,800 to 2,400. Custom fabrication doesn’t round your drawing to a stock size.
It has to match something already there, and the unit is discontinued. A phase-two courtyard beside a phase one built eight years ago; four benches to replace in a plaza where the original supplier no longer makes them. Either everything gets replaced, or someone builds to match — which is a fabrication problem, not a procurement one.
The design only exists on your drawing. A perforation pattern, a folded profile, a bench built into a retaining wall, a planter that doubles as an edge protection element. There is nothing to specify against, because it hasn’t been made before.
The lead time doesn’t work. An imported unit on a twelve-week lead against an install window that closes in six.
In each case the question isn’t which product to select. It’s whether the thing on the drawing can be built, for roughly what, and by when.
What We Can Fabricate to Your Drawings
Planters and raised beds
Rectangular, curved, tapered, stepped, freestanding or built into a wall. Steel, aluminum, stainless or weathering steel, with plate thickness chosen for the span and the soil load rather than defaulted.
The details that decide the piece are usually drainage, liner and how the base sits. A planter on a podium slab or a roof assembly is a different problem from one on grade — the waterproofing membrane generally settles the fixing method before anything else does. We fabricate to your dimensions, including sizes that don’t exist as a stock unit.
Site seating and benches
Backless and backed, straight and curved runs, seating integrated into planters or retaining walls, and slatted tops in timber or metal.
Fixing is the part most often left open on the drawing: surface-mounted into concrete, cast-in, or freestanding by weight — each changes the frame. Timber slat details need to allow for movement and for eventual replacement without cutting the frame apart. We build to your profile and spacing rather than to a supplier’s.
→ Custom benches and site seating
Bollards and site protection
Fixed, removable and lockable-removable. Plain pipe, sleeved, or fabricated profiles where the bollard is a design element rather than only a barrier.
The questions worth settling early are the same each time: what it is actually protecting against, whether it needs a footing or a base plate, and whether removability is genuinely required or written in out of habit. We fabricate to a drawn profile and a set spacing.
Screens, gates and enclosures
Perforated, slatted, patterned, expanded mesh and bar screens — for mechanical, waste, transformer and utility enclosures, and for privacy and wind screening on terraces and roof decks.
Screens are where wind load and fixing get overlooked most often. A pattern that reads beautifully in elevation can behave like a sail, and the frame and posts have to be sized for it. Openable panels for equipment access are much cheaper decided now than added later. For access-related work, see our custom gates.
→ Garbage and recycling enclosures
Landscape steps, edging and retaining elements
Metal stair stringers and treads through a grade change, planting bed edging, tree grate frames, header and retaining angles, and the trim pieces that resolve a junction between paving, planting and structure.
These are rarely a product. They’re a set of dimensions taken off the site and a decision about how the piece terminates where it meets stone, concrete or soil. Corrosion protection matters more here than almost anywhere else, because much of the metal ends up buried or permanently damp.
Water-feature metalwork
Scuppers, weirs, spouts, basin liners, grate frames, trough sections and access covers.
Water metalwork is unforgiving. A weir edge that isn’t dead level shows the moment it runs, and material selection has to account for continuous wetting, treated water and whatever the maintenance regime actually uses. Stainless is usually the answer, but the grade and the grain direction both matter. If you have a water detail nobody has priced, it’s worth sending early.
From Design Intent to Fabrication
A landscape drawing describes what the piece should be. Fabrication needs to know how it goes together. The gap between those two is where most of the useful conversation happens.
What’s enough to start
A plan, an elevation or section, and any detail you’ve drawn. Dimensions can be preliminary. A reference image plus a sketch is enough for a first conversation — you don’t need a resolved detail to get useful input, and early input is worth more than complete input.
What gets resolved together
- Material and thickness. Thin plate telegraphs welds and oil-cans in direct sun. Thicker plate costs more and reads flat. Worth choosing deliberately rather than inheriting.
- Connections. Welded, bolted or a combination — and whether any part has to come apart later for maintenance or replacement.
- Fixing and interface. How the piece meets concrete, stone, timber or a waterproofing membrane. Cast-in, drilled anchor, adhesive anchor or freestanding by weight, each with a different implication for the landscape contractor’s sequence.
- Tolerance. Site-built concrete and stone don’t arrive at drawing dimension. Where the joint absorbs that difference should be a decision, not an accident — and it’s better made in the shop than with a grinder on site.
- Thermal movement. Long metal runs in full sun move. Slip joints, slotted holes and expansion gaps are cheap when planned and impossible to retrofit.
- Drainage and trapped water. Every horizontal surface and every closed section needs a way for water to leave. This is the most common cause of early failure in landscape metalwork, by a distance.
- Access and handling. A piece that can’t get through the gate, round the corner or onto the deck has to be split — and where it splits is a design decision, not a shop one.
Simplifying without losing the design
Sometimes a detail costs three times what it needs to because of one fold, one radius or one concealed fixing. We’ll tell you which element is driving the number and what a simpler version would look like. Then you decide whether it’s worth keeping — some of them are, and it’s your call to make, not ours.
Shop Drawings and Submittals
For landscape packages we work from your drawings and issue fabrication drawings for review before anything is cut: plan, elevation, section, materials, finish and fixings, so what gets approved is what gets made.
Landscape submittals are usually simpler than building submittals — fewer parties, fewer revision cycles, and review is often by the landscape architect directly rather than routed through a general contractor.
If the project also carries building metalwork — railings, stairs, canopies, Division 05 items coordinated through a GC — that’s a different workflow with heavier documentation. See working with architects for how we handle full submittal and coordination.
Finish Samples on the Actual Substrate
A finish chip tells you the colour. It doesn’t tell you what that finish looks like on the section you specified, at the size you drew, in the light the piece will actually sit in.
Samples we can provide:
- Powder coat on the real profile, in the specified colour and gloss level. A satin finish on folded 3 mm plate reads nothing like the same code on a chip.
- Hot-dip galvanizing, so the spangle and surface texture are visible before they appear on site — and a duplex sample where a coating goes over the galvanizing.
- Weathering steel at a realistic stage. A fresh sample and one that has been outside for six months are not the same colour, and that difference is usually what a client reacts to.
- Stainless in the grade and grain direction it will run. A brushed finish reads completely differently vertically and horizontally.
- Aluminum, anodised or coated, at the section thickness specified.
Coating and galvanizing are carried out by specialist applicators, so samples are coordinated rather than run off in a corner of our shop. Which is exactly why they’re worth requesting at design development rather than at submittal. Samples are yours to keep and to present.
Specifying Metalwork for Coastal Exposure
Metro Vancouver is a wet marine environment, and anything within reach of salt air behaves differently from the same detail inland.
Stainless grade
304 performs well in most sheltered urban settings. Closer to open water, or anywhere subject to salt spray and infrequent washing, 316 is the more defensible specification. Grade alone doesn’t settle it — crevices, weld heat tint and embedded steel particles from fabrication tooling all cause staining that looks like material failure and isn’t.
Galvanizing and duplex systems
Hot-dip galvanizing is the baseline for exposed steel. A duplex system — coating over galvanizing — generally outlasts either alone and lets you keep a specified colour. It depends on correct pre-treatment, which is worth writing into the specification rather than leaving to the applicator to decide.
Trapped water
Closed sections, unsealed seams, capped posts with nowhere to drain and horizontal surfaces without fall are the usual failure points. Most coastal corrosion problems in landscape metalwork are drainage problems first and material problems second.
Dissimilar metals
Aluminum against steel, stainless fasteners into aluminum, and metal cast into wet concrete all need isolating. Stainless fixings through galvanized steel is a common detail that quietly consumes the galvanizing around every hole.
Weathering steel runoff
Weathering steel stains what sits below it for the first year or two. Over light concrete, pale paving or a pool edge, that’s a conversation worth having at design stage rather than after handover. A drip edge or a sacrificial gravel strip usually resolves it.
Material notes by application: steel, stainless steel, aluminum and weathering steel.
Division 32 and Where Custom Metalwork Fits
Most of what a landscape package needs from a fabricator sits in Division 32 — site improvements. Site furnishings, fences and gates, and the metal elements of retaining and planting work are specified there, and that’s typically where a custom planter, bench or screen ends up written.
Division 05 is where building metalwork lives: structural and miscellaneous metal fabrications, railings and architectural metal. Landscape packages routinely carry both — a guard at a grade change is a Division 05 item sitting inside a Division 32 scope.
One fabricator covering both removes a coordination joint between two trades at exactly the point where site meets building — which is usually where the problems turn up. If the item is drawn, we can quote it, whichever section it was written into.
Budget Input Before the Detail Is Locked
The most expensive moment to discover a detail is unaffordable is at tender — when the package is issued, the client has seen it, and the remaining options are substitute or delete.
Send us a sketch or preliminary detail and we can provide initial budget guidance before the design is fully resolved. It isn’t a quote — final pricing depends on confirmed scope, dimensions, materials, finish, site conditions and installation requirements — but it’s usually enough to know whether a detail is worth developing. What it tends to surface:
- Which single element drives the price — often one fold, one radius, one concealed fixing or one non-standard thickness
- Where a material substitution holds the appearance and changes the number
- Which connections are genuinely slow to fabricate, versus which look complex and aren’t
- Whether the piece can be made in fewer sections, or has to be made in more because of site access
- What installation actually involves — frequently a larger share of the cost than the fabrication
The aim isn’t to talk you out of the detail. It’s to make sure that when it survives to tender, it survives because it’s worth the money — not because nobody checked.
Where We Work
Our shop is at 5128 Francisco Court in North Vancouver. We fabricate and install across Metro Vancouver and the Lower Mainland — Vancouver, the North Shore, Burnaby, Richmond, Coquitlam and Surrey.
Proximity matters more on landscape work than people expect. Taking a site measurement, dropping off a sample, and getting to site the morning something doesn’t fit are all easier from twenty minutes away than through a supplier’s agent.
Questions We’re Usually Asked First
How resolved does the drawing need to be before you can help?
Not very. A plan, an elevation and a reference image are enough for a first conversation, and preliminary dimensions are fine. Early is more useful than complete — once a detail is locked and issued, the options narrow to substitute or delete.
Do you provide engineering or structural sign-off?
We fabricate to a drawing. Where a piece needs stamped structural design — anything load-bearing, a guard, a tall screen carrying wind load — that’s a professional engineer’s scope, and we’ll say when we think it applies rather than assume it’s covered elsewhere. We work to an engineer’s details when they’re provided.
Can you match an existing piece already on the site?
Usually. Send photographs, any dimensions you can take, and a note on the finish. Where the original can be measured, matching a profile is straightforward. Where it can’t, the closest achievable match is worth agreeing before fabrication rather than after.
Can we get a physical finish sample before we specify?
Yes, and it’s worth asking for. Samples on the actual profile and thickness are coordinated with the applicators rather than made in our shop, so they need some lead time. Ask at design development and they’ll be in your hands well before submittal.
Do you install, or fabricate only?
Both. We fabricate and install, and we’re equally comfortable supplying to a landscape contractor handling their own setting-out and groundwork. If installation is going to the landscape contractor, say so early — it changes how the piece is detailed and how it’s split for handling.
Can you give budget guidance at design development rather than at tender?
Yes. Initial budget guidance can come from a sketch or preliminary detail. It isn’t a quote — final pricing depends on confirmed scope, dimensions, material, finish, site conditions and installation — but you don’t need a full tender package to get a number worth planning around.
Screens in a Landscape Package
Where a landscape package carries screening rather than furnishing, privacy and architectural screens covers pattern, opacity, wind and fixing in more detail.
Fencing and Boundary Metalwork
Where a landscape package carries a boundary rather than a screen, custom metal fencing covers bay layout, sloped sites and the junctions where runs meet walls and grade changes.
Send us the detail
It doesn’t need to be resolved. A PDF, a section, a sketch on trace, a reference image, or a photograph of something on another site with “like this, but 2.4 metres” written beside it — any of those is enough to start.
Email sales@trussmetal.com or call (778) 805-5333. If it’s early, we’ll tell you roughly what it costs and what’s driving that. If it’s ready, we’ll quote it.