My Raised Flower Beds
I have a particular landscaping challenge that I want to fix in my garden this year. The last tenant in my house pulled up the entire front lawn and turned it into a garden space. Love it! Except that it’s a huge space without any sort of pathways or bed shaping.
This makes for easy tilling, convenient crop rotations and flexible planning each year, but it also means way more space for weeds to grow, stepping on crops and a sloppy looking front yard.
I want to keep as much of that space open for planting in the front yard as possible this year, but I also want to create some easy to maintain pathways and confine the amount of exposed space so I can actually keep it weeded for a change.
Solution: raised garden beds
There are several options out there for the do-it-yourselfer, and I managed to luck my way into the cheapest option of all: Free.
My mom lives on a big property on Gabriola Island and they recently felled a large Cedar that was obscuring their yard in shade. Much sunnier and brighter now. They had the cedar milled into 2×6 rough lumber so they could make use of it, but unfortunately none of it was really straight enough for quality building projects. So it was piled in the garage in a heap. She also had some left over 4×4 cedar post ends from the new fence and back deck she built. So the two of us got out the skill saw and measuring tape and got to work.
We bucked the boards up into 4.5 foot lengths (so each side of the box will be about 4 feet wide with two boards stacked on top of each other), and sliced the posts into 12 inch lengths. So I came away with enough cedar to make three 4’x4’garden beds in my front yard- and all of it was free! I just need to get some U-saddles with stakes on the bottom to anchor the posts in the ground at each corner and assemble the pieces together.
My grand plan is to assemble the boxes in the garage then sink the u-saddle stakes into the ground and drop each box into them, spacing each box about 2 feet apart to allow for the mower. I’d then like to get just enough sod to fill in the rest of the space so my pathways remain weed free but completely green. Other options might include landscaping cloth with paving stones on top or gravel or woodchips, but I prefer a bit of grass- I never water or fertilize my lawn anyways, so why not?
The final task will be tilling up the ground inside each box and topping them up with some fresh WEED FREE soil to start the planting season.
No comments yet.
Leave a comment
Cracked Pot Pix
