How to Build a Raised Garden Bed
Welcome to the DIY landscaping blog. Here are some more ways to add beauty and visual interest to your yard.A raised garden bed offers several advantages over a ground-level bed. For one thing, it gives you easier access to your plants, so you don’t have to bend over as far. It also makes it easier to cover your plants in winter (if necessary) and manage the soil content. There are several other benefits of using a raised garden bed, but in this video we will focus on the building process.
The video below shows how to build a raised garden bed using 2 x 12 pieces of wood. If you want a taller bed, you can use 2 x 16 pieces of lumber.
Build a Raised Bed Easily, Using These Tips
- If you choose a wide enough piece of lumber (as in the video above), you won’t have to stack the levels. This makes the building process much simpler. All you have to do is connect the ends of each side. Easy!
- Most gardening experts recommend avoiding treated lumber with garden beds, because it could leach harmful chemicals into your garden soil. This is especially important if you are growing fruits and vegetables to eat.
- If you have burrowing rodents in your area (moles or voles), you may want to create a screened bottom for your garden bed to keep them from tunneling up into it.
- When you build your raised bed, you might want to consider using angled brackets to connect the corners. This will hold better and last longer than simply drilling or hammering into the grain side of a board.
- Building your own garden bed is a great opportunity to create optimum soil conditions. Contact your local agricultural cooperative extension to see what they recommend, or do some online research. A good potting soil will suffice in most raised garden beds. If you want good drainage, you might need to add a bit of sand to your soil mixture.
I hope this video helps you with your project. Remember, there are many ways to build a raised bed for your yard. The video above just shows one way to do it. If you don’t want to use screws or nails, you could build the bed from large timbers and anchor them at the corners with decorative stones. Like I said — there are many ways to go about it.
If you want to see more videos like the one featured above, visit YouTube.com and do a search for the phrase building a raised garden bed or something similar. Good luck!
Project Ideas | Brandon | 
June 1, 2009 9:53 am
By chandler arizona landscaping, February 12, 2010 @ 10:21 am
This is really helpful for people living in the desert where soil is very rocky and does not have much to offer. We also get some freezing here, so we make nice covers for them as well. I love the info. Thank You