by Yvonne Mccormack

Created on: May 22, 2009

Creating raised beds in your garden will give you a wide scope of things that you can plant. You can either plant flowers or alternatively you can use the raised beds to plant vegetables. There are lots of benefits of having raised beds, one being the ease of weeding and not having to walk on your beds or boarders. Another benefit is you will not have as much bending to do so it saves on back strain too.

When you decide to create a raised bed or boarder take in to consideration the amount of space you have. You don't want your raised beds to be the only thing in your garden. To have a variety of beds and boarders it will make the garden more interesting. It's a good idea to draw a sketch of how you want your raised beds to look, and where to locate them. Also it's a good idea to make a note of what you are going to plant in each bed, be it vegetables or flowers.

To start creating your raised beds first decide on what kind of materials you intend to use. There are lots of different types of stone you can choose from if stone is what you are going to use. You can also use old sleepers for your raised beds these look quite rustic in the garden, and are good for making beds that you are going to plant vegetables in.

If you are using sleepers you will not need to worry about having to have cement to keep them together. All you need to do is stack them on top of each other, staggering them as you go. You can easily cut them to size too. If you like you can make them look like a wall by cutting them to the size of a cement block, this looks very well if done properly.

If you are using stone the hardest part is choosing what type of stone you want as there are so many different types. You can have slate like stone, you can have granite or there was one garden I saw that had used big boulders cemented together it looked quite good too. Look at all the different types then when you have picked the type you want you can start creating your raised beds.

You will not need too much of a foundation as there isn't going to be too much weight on the wall. Make sure that it's level if you are not too handy at building walls it's best to get in a professional in to do this for you.

When the walls are done your own creating can start to take shape. For the flower lover there is no end to the choice of flowers that you can grow in a raised bed. Put taller flowers in the back as you would in a normal bed. The beauty of a raised bed is that you can have trailing flowers all around the edges like lobbelia, and trailing petunia's and busy Lizzie's. The colours are endless too.

For the vegetables in the raised beds it is easy to control pests like slugs and snails, it's also easier to keep them weeded. You can grow most small vegetables in raised beds and with them being in raised beds you don't have to worry about pets trampling on them or digging them up.

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