How to Build Raised Garden Beds
by Jared Anderson & Taffin Evans
Water Valley, Alberta
Bring Your Garden Dreams to Life!
One of the main reasons we wanted to buy property and move rural was to grow our own fruits, veggies and cut flowers! The acreage we ended up falling in love with and buying in 2022 had a beautiful mulched area off our back deck between our house and garage, an already perfect space to set up to start the garden of our dreams!
10 Steps to Building Your Garden Beds:
- Choose an area for your garden that will get enough sunlight throughout the spring, summer (and sometimes fall!) months. Our space off our back deck faces west–so we’ll get plenty of sun and warmth through the spring and summer months – prime growing time in Alberta.
- Measure the area you have picked for your garden to decide how many beds will fit, additionally, decide on the size of beds you’ll need. Maybe you can fit more smaller beds, versus fewer large beds. You can also be creative and create vertical space if you have less square footage! We’re going to include trellis’ on some of our beds where the flowers or veggies need more vertical space to grow – coming soon!
- Decide on the lumber you’re going to use. We decided to go with a pressure treated lumber versus cedar. Cedar would have been our first choice, however, we were on a budget and unfortunately couldn’t afford to do cedar. Instead we went with a pressure treated wood to withstand the snowy environment we get here in Alberta and lined the garden beds with landscaping paper to prevent any leftover chemicals from the wood from leeching into our soil.
- Build your garden beds! We had enough room to do ten garden beds, measuring six feet long by three feet wide, and about 16 inches deep. We also chose to include a top trim–not only is it convenient to sit on for planting and to put things on, but it also helps keep your garden beds together and prevent as much water running down from the top.
- We used 2×8 for the sides of the beds, 2×4 for the supports, and then 2×6 for the trim.
- We did all of our cuts at once–cutting down the 2×8 to six feet and three feet, and the 2×4 to about 15 inches. The trim we did miter because it was a finishing piece (in addition to helping make the beds last longer) at a 45 degree angle.
7. Assemble the beds! We out together the beds on the back deck so we wouldn’t have to move them as far. We used three inch deck screws to put them all together. We did six supports because our beds were longer, so four in each corner and then two in the middle.
8. We moved the beds to their spots in the garden, and levelled them out. Once they were level, we attached the top trim pieces.
9. We finally lined the beds with landscape paper to make sure the chemicals wouldn’t get into the dirt from the pressure treated wood. If you’re using cedar, you don’t need to do this step, but you can still choose to do so if you’d like!
10. Don’t forget–if you’re like us and live in an area with wildlife, like deer–make sure you fence off your garden area. Our deer fence is 8 feet tall, with about a 10 foot support beam so they aren’t tempted to jump over!
We have already decided to expand our garden up the hill so we can grow some berries, potatoes, sunflowers and peas more easily. We will post updated photos once the fence is complete!
We absolutely cannot wait to continue sharing photos of our growing garden every year!