Garden Raised Beds Make the Perfect Container Garden

If you do a lot of Container Gardening, you might also want to consider a raised garden bed.  

Garden raised beds are versatile and can double the planting space in your yard. You don’t have to stick with the old square bed either, there are now very creative ways to use garden raised beds in a variety of shapes and sizes - you can get some great ideas at Frame-It-All .

Garden raised beds offer a three dimensional appeal to your landscape because of the noticeable transition point from yard to plant bed. Raised garden beds are often sought after in high profile landscapes and yard designs, but also work perfectly for small space gardening.

Garden raised beds have to be contained so that it they will not erode into the yard or into the rest of your landscape.

So, how is this best accomplished?

The best way is to build a retaining wall around the plant bed will retain the soil and keep plantings from being washed away by the weather. The retaining wall is successive rows of wall block laid on top of each other to form a wall. The blocks themselves are made from concrete. If you are ambitious, you can build a retaining wall for garden raised beds you plant yourself. It is not hard, but it involves a lot of physical labor (see below).

The first thing that must be done when considering your raised garden bed and retaining wall is your plan design. Plan out where the bed will be in your yard and then get a piece of long rope and layout the shape of your plant bed on your lawn by laying the rope on the lawn where you want the plant bed to be.

The best looking garden raised beds and retaining wall systems are designed such that the retaining wall top blocks are level from the high point to the low point. Since the ground where you will lay your retaining wall blocks is not level and may even slope, you have to plan your wall design so the top blocks will be level with each other.

To do this, drive wood stakes in the ground at the highest and lowest elevation points of the plant bed dimension. Also drive a stake in the middle between the high point and low point if you need to so that your level line will not sag.

Using non-stretch string and a line level and starting at the high point of your plant bed, tie the string off to rest where you want the top block surface height to be. This will be the starting point of your retaining wall, with the end being the lowest elevation point. The level line will serve as your height guide for where the tops of all the wall blocks will eventually be. Tie the string off at the midpoint and then the low point, making sure the line is kept level with your line level.

If this sounds like a lot of work, you might consider more of a ground level planter, and remember, not all garden raised beds need a retaining wall, but just in case you’re really into building your wall, click the "next" button below the picture on the right to continue to the next page.

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