How to Make a Raised Flower Bed From Scratch

Raised flower beds have many advantages over traditional garden areas.

Raised flower beds have several advantages over in-ground planting. You can control the soil content when you use this method, benefiting your flowers by giving them nutrients they need. You can also hide or disguise old, weedy lawn or other unattractive areas because you simply cover them with your bed. If you have gophers, you can outwit them by attaching wire to the bottom of a wooden frame you use as a border for your raised bed. And you can recycle old cardboard and yard waste when you build your bed.

Things You'll Need

• Measuring tape
• Lawn mower or trimmer
• Stakes
• String
• Newspaper or flattened cardboard
• Boards
• Nails
• Hammer
• Wire (optional)
• Staples (optional)
• Staple gun (optional)
• Compost
• Organic materials
• Shovel
• Rake
• Sprinkler

Instructions

1. Measure the area where you plan to build your raised flower bed. If the area is large, consider building more than one bed to provide access to and around it and make it easier to reach your plants.

2. Mow or trim all unwanted plants from the area. You needn't dig out old lawn grass or small weeds, but do remove larger weeds and rocks. Mark the corners of your bed by driving stakes into the soil and tie string from stake to stake.

3. Lay several sheets of newspaper or flattened cardboard over the area inside your raised bed. Overlap pieces to cover the ground completely. Build a wooden frame, if you wish, using boards that are 1 inch wide by 12 inches tall. Nail or screw the boards together at their corners and then place the frame on the cardboard or newspaper.

4. Fill your raised flower bed by shoveling layers of organic materials, such as compost of any type, lawn trimmings, leaf litter, kitchen and yard waste, peat moss, wood ash and any other materials you have available, into it.

5. Rake the top of your completed bed level and then run a sprinkler over the bed for 20 to 30 minutes. You can begin planting flowers immediately.

Tips & Warnings

• A good size for a raised flower bed is 4 feet wide by 8 feet long, but you can vary it according to the space you have available and the number of flowers you want to plant.

• To keep gophers out of your raised flower bed, staple sturdy chicken wire or poultry wire to one side of your wooden frame before you place it in your bed area and fill it with planting materials.

• Most types of flowering plants need only a shallow bed in which to grow. Making your raised bed 6 inches deep will suffice for most plants, but you can build it deeper if you are planning to grow larger plants or if you like the appearance of a higher bed.

References

• Ohio State University: Raised Bed Gardening
• "Lasagna Gardening"; Patricia Lanza; 1998
• University of Missouri: Raised Bed Gardening