How to Make a Raised Garden Bed

Our house had a garden before we moved in, but it was only about 8″ tall. This is fine if you don’t have a dog. So last year after we remodeled our kitchen, I used the old kitchen drawers to plant vegetables and give the garden some character. The post on how to build a garden with drawers is here.

The drawers kept our St. Bernard, Sherman, from digging in the garden, which was my goal. However, we caught him peeing on a cucumber plant one day and that was the end of eating from the garden.

So this year we decided to make the garden bigger (which Tyler has wanted) and taller (which is what I wanted). After the wedding, we added our arch to the garden. To keep the arch steady, a more secure garden would help with that, too.

It was pretty easy to build this raised bed garden. There are many ways to build a wood garden, but I loved how simple ours was. Read the instructions below and post a link to your garden in the comments!

1. Measure the space and buy wood. My measurements were basically around the arch. We went with a 10’x6′ garden. I was pretty damn proud of myself for buying and hauling the wood by myself, although it’s not the most efficient method. These are the projects I wish I had a truck. I bought four 10′ planks and two 12′ planks.

2. Stain the wood. We also wanted a ‘classier’ garden this year, if that’s a thing. More so Tyler than me because I like weird things, like kitchen drawers in my garden. We used a ‘cedar’ color stain from Home Depot. I stained both sides of the wood 3 times for a solid color and to prevent the wood from rotting as fast.

3. Cut the wood to size, if needed. Tyler cut the two 12′ planks in half so each side of my garden would be 6′ wide. He also cut six 2″x4″s to hold the planks together. They were about a foot long and I stained these to prevent rot, too. Below is the remains of our old garden

4. Assemble the structure. We screwed the wood together in a separate place from where the garden would actually be. (Not my idea, but it worked okay). We screwed two rectangle frames using two 10′ planks and two 6′ planks for each.

5. After we moved the arch, we moved the frames to the garden spot, one at a time. Once they were stacked on top of each other, we screwed the 2″x4″s in place to hold them together: one on each of the 6′ sides and two on each of the 10′ sides.

6. The next step will be to staple garden cloth to the inside to further prevent rot. I thought this wasn’t necessary, but Tyler thinks it is.

Tomorrow we will fill it with dirt and start planting! I’m excited it’s gardening and outdoor season. Like last year, I’ll post what we planted in the garden. Check out this post to see one way to plant a garden in the PNW!

What are you planting this year? Comment below!