The beds before the planting or placing of lids.
Raised garden beds come in all shapes and sizes. The depth, width and height are all topics of diverse opinions. Some of those sizes are more useful for certain circumstances, such as being able to reach into the middle of the bed. Others are more of an desire for a specific look, for landscaping, than anything else.
We are building a raised garden bed from scratch because we want to have a lot – and I do mean a lot – of strawberries.
Jennifer is a bit of an addict, you see, and I’m nothing but an enabler.
Garden Design Idea
We finally got the push we needed to build this raised bed after visiting Deep South Homestead. There we saw their covered strawberry beds and immediately decided we could not wait any longer for our own.
The beds with the strawberries planted and lids in place.
We decided to build this bed off the sides of our back deck. This area has one side that is on the east and one to the south. We are curious which will do best. On one hand the general belief is that the more sun, the better. However, with our intense heat and sunlight in the summer we are curious to see how the plants which will be in the shade after about 2pm will do.
There is a playlist of videos slowly coming out on our YouTube channel showing the process we used to build this bed, so be sure to check that out.
Our free-moving lids can be propped up or removed.
One thing we really liked about the beds at Deep South Homestead is that they are covered. There they used lids that are hinged. We chose to go with removable lids just because of how our setup is.
These lids will help by keeping our yard cats out of the bed. They will also keeping birds and mammals away from our fruit, but still let bees and other pollinators in.
The triangle area provides a nice “rounded off” feeling.
Raised Garden Bed Design
At the bottom of the stairs we made a small triangular area. We’ll likely plant a miniature rose bush there, come spring. We liked the idea of having a tapered edge at the bottom. It feels more natural to walk around than a squared off end.
In the future we’ll be extending the outside wall to the area in front of our citrus trees, seen here wrapped up for the winter. The wall will bring the soil perfectly to the height of the mums and violets you can see in the picture.
You can see the end of the strawberry bed in the bottom right. From there the wall will extend in front of this bed in the future.
Be sure to Subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see how the project was done step-by-step!
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