We have become more and more involved with gardening since moving into our new house a few years ago. I find it so relaxing to be able to potter outside when I get home from work and on the weekend. There are so many jobs that need doing and I spend alot of time with my OH talking about what we can do to make our ideas come to life. Like most people we have to remember to balance what we want with the reality that our garden has to be right for the whole family. Back when we moved in our first project was  the spring garden make over where some of the things we considered were how we could make the garden ‘boy friendly’ as our boys love playing football.

This year we have looked at having a raised bed at the far end of the garden to make use of a little patch that has been all but forgotten. It’s a bit shady and was just a great big mound of earth that really looked a bit soft and not good for anything.

For ages we said that we should do something with it and last year I scattered a few beetroot seeds over it just as a passing thought. Nothing came of them really as it gets trodden on when the bikes are bought out of the shed and once again its left looking a bit sorry for itself.

So this year it was time to do something about it and make it work for us. We decided on a raised bed, we are not full on DIY people but as you can see from our pallet garden, my OH can construct a thing or two and that recycled garden area has been a great success using free pallets and a little bit of brain power. It lasts really well too.

So back to the raised bed at hand. We decided on a structure we could put together easily without cutting and drilling, one of the reasons being because we don’t have the tools to hand. We are big fans of recycling so it was a step away from using what we had around to buying in the metal and using the fast track choice. This will mean that we will be making use of it for a long time or if we do change the use of it then we will ourselves recycle the materials. There are lots of different stores which sell these and we chose one that was having a closing down sale so picked it up for a bargain price.

For this 5 Easy Steps to Making a Raised Bed I’ve used pictures to show how my two happy helpers got stuck in …and how quick it was to create.

Step 1

Here’s the patch of earth I was talking about before, pretty basic eh? We gave it a rough measuring out beforehand. My son and OH then created a flat area and gave it a good weeding.

Step 2

Like any good construction project my chaps had a good long look at all the bits they were going to assemble! Oh and by now it started to rain!

Step 3

Structure up and slotted together perfectly, no banging on the fingers, hopping on one foot after dropping a hammer, nada!

Step 4

At this point I think I did help with the carrying up to the end of the garden, or at least shouting encouraging words, I can’t quite remember. The bed fitted in perfectly.

Step 5

Numerous trips then followed to bring the soil and compost up there to fill it up. We roughed up the base soil which it was sitting on first so that it would feed in the nutrients from the rich soil we were putting on above.

We were now ready to go! I have been reading and thinking about what I want to try growing in this area and it will be mainly root vegetables but for the first year I will have a little experiment with a few different types. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes. For now this is a brilliant raised bed completed in just one afternoon.

What projects have you been carrying out in your garden?

What do you think to the idea of a raised bed?

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