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Raised Garden Beds add a lot of beauty to a garden.
They’re also excellent for drainage, warming up the soil faster in the springtime and a little higher for easier harvesting. They can make your garden look amazing! I’ve also found that raised garden beds are easier for weeding and get less weeds in general.
There are a many designs & materials you can use create a raised vegetable garden!
Over the years we’ve made a few raised beds which you can see in the next few photos.
Then we’ll go into the many materials you can use for raised garden beds, lots of inspiration & DIY tutorials!
Raised beds using new wood
Here’s one we build from old split logs
Raised garden beds in our polytunnel greenhouse using cedar wood
We also built a raised rock herb spiral (see DIY tutorial)
Materials for your DIY raised garden beds
There are many different materials you can use to create your raised beds. This image from Fix.com Blog shows you potential building materials.
Wooden Garden Bed DIY Tutorial from Sunset
Savvy Gardening shows you how to make a concrete block raised bed.
Bonus you can plant in the cinder blocks too!
Galvanized tubs for a raised bed on Gardeninginraisedbeds
Galvanized steel can also be used as sides as alamodestuff shows you
Ideas from Rodaleorganiclife for building materials
Creative Designs for Raised Garden Beds
We’ve done a lot of ‘boring’ long straight rows with our raised beds (so far!) but I’m totally inspired by some of the creative shapes and designs that people have come up with for their garden. These creative raised beds add a lot of beauty and eye appeal to your garden, perfect to have close to an outdoor eating area.
U-Shaped Raised Wooden Bed Tutorial by My Daily Randomness
Gorgeous raised garden beds with star in the centre spotted on icreated
atasteoftheearth has this unique keyhole style raised bed
More designs that you can purchase over at the DIY farmer
Conclusion
As we’re building up our new garden and homestead in 2017 we’re trying to get as many creative ideas as we can for how we envision our backyard to look like. This year our focus is on building the chicken coop and the ‘in the ground’ garden which is 60 x 20 feet. For 2018 we’re planning on building and creating a gorgeous raised bed area so stay tuned for how that turns out!
My name is Isis Loran, creator of the Family Food Garden. I’ve been gardening for over 10 years now and push the limits of our zone 5 climates. I love growing heirlooms & experimenting with hundreds of varieties, season extending, crunchy homesteading and permaculture.
Thank you for such a helpful and informative tutorial. We are going to redo our rather extensive raised bed gardens and have one suggestion to offer. If you plan to use landscape fabric or black plastic to thwart weeds, make the width of your raised beds the same size as the width of a roll of weed-controlling material. Saves a lot of time!
YES! We made that mistake actually. I always see raised beds ON TOP of grass online and we tried it and it was a disaster, grass really can get in anyways overtime. Thanks for the top! Happy gardening