Building Raised Beds - Six on Saturday ...

Yet another lockdown garden landscaping project ...

Inspired by some new raised beds I saw during a review of the Six-on-Saturday submissions recently, I decided to re-configure our main vegetable growing space, referred to as the 'side bed' in our garden layout. 

We have several types of vegetable seeds germinating in cells in the greenhouse, and our trays of leeks and onions sown earlier in the year are too small for planting out yet, so we've still plenty of time to prepare these particular vegetable beds.  We've already planted out garlic in the front bed, and sown radishes and spring onions in the cold frame.

Here's the 'before' picture of the space, although this was actually taken after I'd already relocated our large stainless steel table, which itself took a couple of hours what with first moving our quince tree (it's in a large planter), putting down a weed membrane, repositioning a few paving stones to fit under the table legs, emptying the shelf of all the bags of compost & stones, then shifting the table and replacing everything.

the side bed - that's our cold frame on the right, with the glass removed ...

To make the new raised beds, I still had a lot of pieces of unused wood lying around after the new greenhouse build, most of them offcuts of various lengths but also four full-length timbers.  I'd intended to use this wood to re-make the garden gate, but that job can now wait until later in the year at which time, hopefully, the timber yards will be open again.


In addition to the new timbers, there's all the wood reclaimed from demolishing the old greenhouse, most of which is still in good condition.  However, although they're protected by paint, these old timbers are not all pressure treated, so they would only be used for the upper sections of the walls of the beds.

The walls of the raised beds are built by simply stacking lengths of wood on top of each other edgewise.  The bottom strakes are made entirely from the new timbers, all pressure treated, since they're in contact with the soil from day one.

The exception is the rear wall of one bed near the hedges, for which I used old scaffold boards laid on edge, each equivalent to the depth of three of the other timbers.

I spent half-an-hour or so playing around with positioning offcuts in the space, and moving them around to get an idea of how to best create the beds and pathways.   

And then it was out with the saws, drill & driver to construct the base layers of each bed, digging the soil away locally to maintain the level, although the area slopes in both the east-west and north-south directions, and I wasn't too strict when using the spirit level.

I completed the first layer of everything before starting to build any of the individual beds upwards, so I could properly visualise the space.  I just built the beds on the fly, with no drawings or sketches.  So here's the end of the first day, with the four beds and the paths now clearly defined.

the layout, although there's still a few tweaks to be made at this stage ...

To secure the walls of the beds, I used 150 mm (6") long screws through the upper timbers fixed into those beneath.  In normal times, I'd probably have gone out and bought a box of lighter gauge long screws - the ones I have in the shed are very heavy duty - but the DIY shops are closed so I just used what I had.

Again, I completely finished the second level of all the beds before starting to build up further.   I ran out of the new timbers during construction of this second layer, so one of the beds uses the reclaimed wood.

And therefore the third layers of all the bed walls were built from the ex-greenhouse framing timbers.  Where I cut them to length and created freshly exposed ends, I sealed the end grain using the original paint type and colour - we'd kept half a tin of it for touch-ups and repairs during the life of the old greenhouse.

new chamfer at the entrance to the path, for wheelbarrow access ...

Although the walls of the beds are much higher than the current soil level, we won't top them up before planting this year's vegetables.  We'll wait until we've produced our first batch of home-made compost, hopefully by the end of the year.

In the far bed, nearest the hedge, I made a square plinth from two layers of timber, and placed a 600 mm (2') square flagstone on top.  The container with the plum tree was lifted onto this slab.  As we gradually increase the depth of the soil in the beds, it's important that the drain holes in the container never become buried because the roots of the plum tree could become waterlogged, expecially in the winter.

raised plinth for the plum tree container ....

This is the darkest of the new bed locations, and in the summer it'll be shaded for most of the day by the blackcurrant bushes and hedges, but it should still be ideal for growing leafy stuff such as spinach.  And this bed is shallower than the others, at only two timber layers high.

At the side of the bed nearest the table, I built a low trellis to partially conceal all the bags of compost etc.  I've sown dwarf beans in here, as an edible screen.

And I temporarily partitioned two of the beds using fenceboards to create narrow-ish strips, which were then filled almost to the brim with a mixture of sieved soil and compost.   For this year, I've sown three rows of carrots in one partition and a similar arrangement with parsnips in the other.  The wire mesh on top is just to stop the neighbourhood cats from digging up the soft soil, and I'll remove it after seed germination.

In the far bed, I've positioned my galvanised potting table along one edge.   I usually make a lot of mess when filling pots and seed trays etc, so now I can just sweep any spilt compost etc off the back of the table and directly onto the bed behind.

trellis, temporary partitions and potting table ...

To finish the job, we wanted to lay decorative stones over the pathways.  Our local garden centre is closed to visitors but is still delivering.  I called them and they e-mailed me some photos of the bags of stones they had in stock, and so I ordered 24 bags of a blue slate.

While waiting for the delivery, I raked up all the pathways and sieved the spoil - the small stones went back onto the paths, and the fine soil into the beds.    We then treaded over the pathways to compact and level the ground.

We laid a weed membrane using the last of our stock of used woven polypropylene sacks.  I find these are much better at stopping weeds long-term than the cheaper proprietrary membranes available at the garden centres.

So, it's all finished and we're quite pleased with the results.  The stones for the paths were the only materials we needed to buy, since we had everything else lying around.