Building a raised bed

I am a total gardening novice who recently bought a first home.

After sorting out our lawn (riddled with moss etc, still not 100% yet), I want to turn my attention to building a raised bed to run along the fence to put nice flowers and colour in for next year. An idea of the type of thing I have in mind is here:

http://www.lawnswoodlandscapes.com/images/site/h_lawn-and-raised-bed.jpg

Here is our garden in current blank form:





The question I guess I have is, how do I build this / where do I start? Is this something a professional should tackle or is it something thats not too complicated to make?

 

What a lovely blank canvas to start with !

If you would prefer to have a raised bed i would cut the shape out of the grass first and turn over the soil. Then you need to create your raised bed frame. we made ours out of treated timber posts and staggered the the joints (like brickwork). We then joined everything together with large staples and lined it in heavy duty polythene. the frame was then put on top of the soil and posts were then knocked into the soil on the inside corners of the frame. the frame was then filled with soil and compost. It wasn't a hard job.

 

Thanks!

When you say staggered the joints, how did you do that? My joinery skills are somewhat limited! I was hoping to get the biggest bits of 2x4 and joining them all together. Do you need to make any foundations with posts or can it just sit on the ground as long as its level?

 

If you want an easy hassle free way of building raised beds i full recommend http://www.linkabord.co.uk

They are really simple to build and fuss free :-)

 

We bought treated timber fence posts (approx. 3" x 3" x 6') and staggered the joints brickwork style. We didn't make any foundations, it just sat on the ground, lined with thick polythene to stop it rotting. We cut the base pieces first and lay them out on level ground to make the shape we wanted. The next level overlapped the joints by about 50%. The bed was held in place with posts in the corners.

 

I have raised beds - railway sleepers.

Was very labour intensive to construct, but well worth imo

 

Here is one of my beds:

 

Thanks all.

Sirius what was your method ?

 

The sleepers were placed roughly in position.
Some of the soil underneath the sleepers was taken away to make sure they were 100% level.
Secured with appropriate nails.
Filled with soil
Planted up - the fun bit!

 

Another view

 

I don't quite understand the reasoning behind raised beds unless you have a problem with depth of soil in the garden or terrible drainage. I have 2 raised veg beds purely because the area had a greenhouse on it at 1 time and it was easier to construct a raised bed than dig out concrete! I also can see the point if you have trouble bending but apart from that I'm slightly lost as to why people go to all the trouble and expense of creating them? I can see the point of edging and having a barrier between flowerbeds (I have about 300 yards of wood/brick edging in my huge garden). Sure someone will enlighten me as to the virtues of raised beds for reasons I haven't thought of.

 

I like the way it looks.

Not sure if a raised bed on top of concrete will work?
Drainage may be an issue.

 

My parents woodblox raised beds are on concrete and there is no drainage issue at all :-)

 

Perhaps having doubts that a raised bed is right for my garden. What do you think would work best given this layout?



I was thinking maybe a little bit of paving for an edge would be nice, that way I could put the wheel of the mower on it and not have to edge that side of the lawn.

A clearly defined boundary that looks nice is what I am looking for most of all, with room for a bed along the fence for small flowers etc.