having back problems? Are you a card-carrying neat freak? The answers to these questions will help you determine the size and shape of your beds and how much space to leave between them.
Just How Neat Are You?
Let’s start with the last question first. The “neat freak” bit. It might not seem like a factor in gardening, but it can make the difference between spending time in the garden or not. If you prefer to have everything in its place, but you now have an unorganized and random garden, you probably won’t want to be there very often. A soldierly array of crisp raised beds might just be the ticket. Conversely, if you’d rather your vines ramble, and you love the look of a lush, overgrown jungle, take this into consideration before installing formal square beds. Chances are high that a snaking border or keyhole garden is going to suit you better.
Evenly spaced and orderly is the way to go for some gardeners.
What Do You Want from Your Garden?
Your garden should match your needs. Do you want high production, or do you just want to putter around? If you intend for this garden to produce a bounty of food for your family, you will benefit from structuring the garden with beds in full sun along with easy-to-access pathways with room for a wheelbarrow or large tubs. Build your planter beds wide enough to accommodate large plantings but narrow enough so you can access the produce without stepping into the beds. If, on the other hand, this garden is going to be a place to disappear and putter, then feel free to create cluster gardens, perhaps each with a different theme, and choose locations around your yard to tuck them into. Making choices that satisfy your needs will help you enjoy and use your garden(s) more thoroughly. Let’s look at some pointers for high-production gardens.
High-Production Gardens
Three feet (0.9 m) for kids, more for grown-ups: An adult can reach the center of a raised bed from either side most easily if the bed is no wider than 4 feet (1.2 m). It can be as long as you want—4 feet (1.2 m), 6 feet (1.8 m), 12 feet (3.7 m), or more—as long as you can access the midline of the bed on the two long sides. Some biointensive methods call for beds that are 5 feet (1.5 m) wide. To prevent soil compression that can occur while working these beds, farmers and gardeners usually keep planks of wood on hand to distribute their weight evenly. By laying a plank down across the area, a person can step or kneel on the plank instead of directly on the soil.
Children can’t reach as far as adults and will have to climb into your garden, disturbing the soil and possibly trampling seedlings if they can’t reach the center. Limit kid-sized beds to 4 feet (1.2 m) wide or less. A 3-foot- (0.9-m-) wide bed will be sufficient for adults, while giving children room to grow. A 2-foot- (0.6-m-) wide bed, while it may seem small, can be the perfect size for little hands in a school garden. While we’re on the subject of kids, this is a good time to mention that toddlers are usually pullers or diggers. They love to grab tiny seedlings and get a closer look. They like to dig tunnels for their rubber duckies. If this makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, you might want to create a special garden just for the kids.
Twelve inches (30.5 cm) deep: Unless you have rich, loamy, fecund soil to begin with, you will want to build a raised bed that is at least 12 inches (30.5 cm) deep. Adequate root space is critically important to a plant’s health. Some gardening experts say that 6 inches (15 cm) deep is plenty, but the truth is that the deeper the soil is conditioned, the more easily plants will grow. Give your garden a good head start by building a foundation that is deep enough. For those using wood for this task, 2- x 12-inch (5- x 30.5-cm) lumber is best.
Two-foot (0.6-m) pathways (3-foot [0.9-m] for equipment): An average gardener needs only 2 feet (0.6 m) of space between beds to access the garden with ease. It is wide enough to kneel or sit down without backing into the bed behind you. If you plan to use a wheelbarrow or small garden cart, or need wheelchair access, make the pathways between beds at least 3 feet (0.9 m) wide. Better yet, measure your cart/wheelchair and base your pathway dimensions on that. Some experts reduce the amount of space between beds in order to fit more crops. If you are comfortable with navigating the foliage that will inevitably spill out of your incredibly productive beds onto the pathways, feel free to reduce the pathways to 19 inches (48 cm) or less. Just be aware that melons and squash will make for an interesting obstacle course.
Plan your garden accordingly if you will have little helpers.
Low-Key Gardens
If you plan to have a more low-key, meandering garden instead, keep these principles in mind.
Stepping stones are your friends: No matter how you set up your garden, you will be able to manage it more easily if you place stepping stones in strategic places to help navigate around your growing areas. A well-placed piece of flagstone or tile can help direct wandering guests and help prevent soil compaction in conditioned beds. If you plan to have growing areas that are wider than 4 feet (1.2 m), situate more stepping stones in the middle of the growing area to allow for ease of access.
Mimic nature: Nature presents itself in winding streams and spiraling vines. You can incorporate these elements of nature into the shape of your garden beds. A curving pathway through irregularly shaped beds can be more inviting to curious guests than a beeline entryway. You can also incorporate curves into the garden to capture water (more on that in Chapter 7, Irrigation). If you plan to create undulating free-form shapes, it is much easier to use adobe or earthbags, rather than wood, to build your raised beds. Bricks and stones offer similar flexibility. Just make sure your materials are not so thick and bulky that you lose access to the planting areas.
Where Will You Sit?
There are many ways to create sitting spaces in the garden, and raised beds offer a couple of different ways to rest. You can create a sitting rail around the perimeter of the bed by adding a “cap” of a 2x4 horizontally atop the frame of the bed. Secure the cap with 3-inch (7.5-cm) wood screws and add vertical supports—usually also made from 2x4s—that run top to bottom on the outside of the raised bed, underneath the cap. Another option is to place your raised beds closer together, with smaller pathways, so you can sit on the edge of one bed while working in the other. This strategy also helps those gardeners with lower back issues.
A curving pathway can be both interesting and useful.
Geeky Gardening TiP:
Try a Keyhole Garden
A keyhole garden uses permaculture design principles that aspire to create more edges in the garden. The more edges you create, the more planting surface you have. This design is based on the shape of a keyhole and can be built as a waist-high raised bed or as low as a few inches (7 or 8 cm) above ground. Think of it as a circle with a pathway leading into the center from one edge. The circle is between 8 and 12 feet (2.4 and 3.7 m) in diameter. The entire area of the circle is planted, but not the pathway. Gardeners access the garden space from the center of the circle, along the pathway, and along the outer circumference of the circle.
Some keyhole gardens incorporate a compost pile into the center of the circle. If you would like to try this, make sure that your planting area is narrow enough so that you can reach it entirely from the outside of the circle. Keyhole gardens are an efficient use of space and break the straight-line boundaries of formal raised beds.
Raised-Bed Building Tips
