Raised-Flowerbed

Raised-Flowerbed
Raised-Flowerbed
	Finished Construction of Flower Bed;
Information
Owner	Jferguson
Version	1.0
Status	Completed
Started On	May 2010

The Raised Flower Bed is a gardening project designed to make a much more manageable and controllable flower bed as opposed to a traditional in ground flower bed.

Overview

The goal of this project was a cheap and easy design of a do it yourself raised flower bed. The benefits of a raised flower bed are better soil drainage so that the plant's roots aren't in compacted, water logged soil, better control of soil mixture, and extended growing seasons since raised beds warm up sooner in the spring, and stay warmer longer in the fall than traditional flower beds. This was a very quick project to set up, I think we spent more time wandering around Lowe's than we did actually putting the container together. You can easily go buy a prefab raised flower bed for about $100. The frame itself, plus the landscape fabric to put under it to keep weeds out, cost us less than $60. We haven't bought any soil or plants to put in it yet, those are coming in a few weeks. This was much more of a spontaneous idea.

Construction

The construction of the raised bed itself was very easy. We used 2x6x8 wood, we had two of the pieces cut in half (Lowe's cut it at the store for us). The two pieces that we cut in half would serve as the short ends. I started out and screwed one of the 2x6x8 pieces into the shorter 2x6x4 pieces and then worked my way around until I had a rectangle. We placed the first tier of the bed where we wanted it, and I used 1x2x18 stakes to stake out the corners and inside edges for support. Then I laid out the next tier on top the same way as the bottom. Then I happened down the stakes to be flush, or just below the top edge of the second tier and used the deck screws to secure the top tier to the stake.

Features

Implemented

Large raised ground area to plant flowers / vegetable garden

Bill of Materials

Item	Metric	Cost/Item	Qty	Sub Total	Distributor
Box of 2.5 in (6.4 cm) Deck Screws	N/A	$7.89	1	$7.89	Lowe's
2 in (5.1 cm) x 6 in (15 cm) x 8 in (20 cm) Top Choice Wood	N/A	$4.59	6	$27.54	Lowe's
1 in (2.5 cm) x 2 in (5.1 cm) x 18 in (46 cm) Grade Stakes 25pc	N/A	$6.00	1	$6.00	Lowe's