there is a little something for everybody. Some of the projects—the sun gate, the potting bench, or the cold frames—require a bit of carpentry skill and are, therefore, a little more challenging, but they can easily be accomplished with some practice (or help!) and a good weekend of time. Other projects in the book require a little more artistic flair, like the mason bee house or the rock garden markers, so we hope that there’s a little something for everyone. Most of the projects are aimed at providing some kind of useful or decorative feature for the garden, so you’ll find things like wooden trellises for your pole beans, peas, and other climbing vegetables, and a rain water barrel to help you recycle valuable rainfall from the roof of your home, garage, or garden shed. You’ll also find instructions for things like raised beds (actually, two different kinds of raised beds). Finally, since this is a garden book, after all, we’ve included some truly garden-specific projects, including how to attract pollinator bees to your garden and instructions on how to grow a few favorite garden crops.
Even though we’re primarily promoting the concepts behind these projects—and highly encourage you to “take what you find useful” and apply it to your own ideas— we’ve nevertheless included exact cut lists/ dimensions/instructions for almost every project, so you could very well copy what we’ve done exactly. Whatever works for you and your garden space.
Reasons to DIY
Since you’re already reading this book, you might not need any convincing about the advantages of building your own garden infrastructure and decorations. But we’ll toss out a few reasons anyway, because we feel they are significant.
Cost savings.Someone might ask, “Why not just buy a raised bed? Or purchase a potting table?” A valid position, and you certainly could do that. But building items like this (especially large items) is almost always less expensive in the end, especially if you can source some or all of the materials from lumber or supplies you already have on hand. Even if you do need to purchase lumber, the process of constructing the projects yourself should lower the cost, sometimes by quite a bit. Also, building large items saves on shipping costs, if you’re buying long-distance.
Satisfaction and customization.Besides cost savings, there is a lot of satisfaction to be found in DIYing. Not only are you building a useful or attractive item with your own hands, using your own skills, you’re able to adjust the design or incorporate your own ideas into the project, giving it a one-of-a-kind look. You can also adjust the dimensions or features of the project to exactly match your existing garden situation, effectively customizing the design to suit your specific needs. All of this adds up to a certain element of satisfaction that you won’t find by merely purchasing an item from a store.
Are you ready to get going, then? We hope so, but before you jump immediately into the projects, we thought it might be beneficial to briefly cover some of the main tools that you need for the majority of the projects, and we’ll do that next. Once the tool review is over, it’s on to the fun! See you there.
How to Read the Cut List
About Metric Conversions
Lengths of lumber are sold, in North America, by their nominal dimensions, which are usually different from their actual dimensions. For example, a 2×4 actually measures 1 1/2 × 3 1/2 inches. For lumber like this, the metric conversions reflect the nominal rather than the actual dimensions.
1×1 = 25 × 25 mm
1×2 = 25 × 51 mm
1×6 = 25 × 152 mm
1×8 = 25 × 203 mm
2×2 = 51 × 51 mm
2×4 = 51 × 101 mm
2×6 = 51 x 152 mm
2×12 = 51 × 305 mm
4×4 = 101 × 101 mm
1×6
2×4
4×4
1×8
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