Beautiful + Functional Raised Garden Beds

There are plen­ty of rea­sons to choose raised gar­den beds over tra­di­tion­al plant­i­ng. They are eas­i­er to weed and main­tain, plus they make gar­den­ing look orga­nized and beau­ti­ful. This year, like years before, we are chos­ing to raise our beds bly.ut I am approach­ing things a bit different

This year I am excit­ed to have my own kitchen gar­den which will con­sist of a 14x14’ space and four 3x5’ beds. Even­tu­al­ly I have dreams of a white pick­et perime­ter fence with an arched entry­way. Com­plete with riv­er rock, an assort­ment of pot­ted herbs and flow­ers around the perime­ter. Yes I know, big dreams. It will take some time and care to get there but a girl can dream right?

The area we are ded­i­cat­ing to the raised beds is locat­ed near the chick­en coop and clothes line, so I am imag­in­ing it becom­ing a very relax­ing, func­tion­al and beau­ti­ful space. In the past our beds have been tem­po­rary and meer­ly for food pro­duc­tion and well…ugly, for the lack of a bet­ter word. This is obvi­ous­ly the rea­son for plant­i­ng, to pro­duce food…buuuut my dec­o­raters heart needs to have things pretty.

Plan­ning your beds can be over­whelm­ing espe­cial­ly is you want to focus on asthet­ic. Thank good­ness you aren’t the only one paving the trail for a beau­ti­ful gar­den. I have gath­ered a col­lec­tion of beau­ti­ful gar­den spaces of dif­fer­ent, shapes styles and con­vien­cences that I am eager to share with you.

I hope you find these inspir­ing for your own gar­den space. 

1.U‑SHAPED WITH SOLAR LIGHTS

I love the use of the space here. A sim­ple waist high u‑shape allows you to max­imise your space amd makes weed­ing and pick­ing a breeze. The solar lights are a nice touch of charm and beau­ty for the evening hours. 

2. COZY COTTAGE STANDARD PLANTERS

This par­tic­u­lar set up stopped me in my tracks. It looks super sim­i­lar to my exist­ing chick­en coop. Col­ors and all. I think this par­tic­u­lar set up is a gar­den shed, but it does have me con­sid­er­ing relo­cat­ing my beds clos­er to the coop for more of a small cot­tage type feel. The gar­den beds them­selves are sim­ple and spaced nice­ly and con­vie­nient­ly locat­ed near the gar­den shed! 

3. ELEVATED GARDEN 

This is an excel­lent way to mkae your veg­gies easy to care for. A waist high planter would eas­i­ly elim­i­nate the need for bend­ing, not to men­tion it would help to keeo crit­ters and com­pact soil to a min­i­mum. Com­pact soil makes it dif­fi­cult for plants to take room. It comes from step­ping between the plants and the rows when car­ing for them.

4. MINI BEDS

Why is it that when you make some­thing minia­ture ut auto­mat­i­cal­ly becomes cuter? The same prin­ci­ple applies here. I like the idea of the plants receiv­ing very indi­vid­u­al­ized care this way. It would be great to con­sid­er these small­er beds when plant­i­ng high spread­ing herbs like mint. This would pre­vent the takeover and keep them from com­pet­ing for resources. 

5. CINDER BLOCK GARDEN BED

I am not sure which I appre­ci­ate more, the inge­nu­ity of the blocks or the adorable pick­et fence around the perime­ter? A pick­et fence around a gar­den checks both of the marks here. Is it beau­ti­ful? Absolute­ly! It adds pur­pose and cre­ates the space. The func­tion­al­i­ty is there too. Fences are a great way to deter deer and oth­er crit­ters that may want to snack on your fresh veggies.

6. UPCYCLED PALLET WOOD BEDS

Upcy­cling pal­lets to build a gar­den bed is an excel­lent use of cheap (or free) resources. There are tons of pal­let wood project ideas out there, why not use them for the pur­pose of cre­at­ing a unique place to gar­den. They add a nice rus­tic touch to an orga­nized way of growing.

7. STACKED GARDENING 

Don’t let the lack of space deter you away from putting fresh food in the soil. This stacked sys­tem is not only beau­ti­ful but it is a space max­i­miz­er! The nar­row spaces around your wal­way or even on the back deck are the per­fect place to slide in some fresh veg­gies with­in arms reach.

8. RESOURCEFUL GARDENING 

Did I men­tion that I love it when func­tion meets style? Being resource­ful while emcom­pass­ing both is just like the icing on the cake. This clever trick allows for a nat­ur­al flow from the gar­den to the yard witht he use of logs. A good day of clean up around the home­stead and you have your­self a stack of nat­u­ral­ly beau­ti­ful gar­den barriers. 

9. CLEAN AND SIMPLE 

Raised beds can make all the dif­fer­ence when plant­i­ng , prun­ing and pick­ing from climb­ing plants. Hav­ing a trel­lis for cucum­bers and even toma­toes will help make pick­ing a breeze. I would even go as far to say that this would make a cute lit­tle ori­vace screen. I am imag­in­ing it on a porch or fence line to a neigh­bor­ing property. 

ARE YOU READY TO GROW BEAUTIFULLY?

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