Easy Raised Gardens for Backyards

Significance

• Many amateur and experienced gardeners use raised garden beds to prevent back and knee strain commonly associated with ground-level gardening. However, raised bed gardening provides many other benefits including increasing the soil's water drainage, allowing earlier and later planting and increasing yields.

Expert Insight

• From cinder blocks to natural rocks and bricks to landscape timbers, virtually anything you can lay on the ground to retain soil can be used as the walls of a raised bed. However, Oregon State University and publishers of "1001 Gardening Secrets The Experts Never Tell You" suggest eliminating the walls altogether and simply piling soil on the ground to approximately 8 inches in depth and leveling the top surface.

Considerations

• While you can build raised bed retaining walls from any available materials, experts advise against using materials that may leak dangerous chemicals into your garden and groundwater supply. Avoid both railroad ties and old tires, which may leak chemicals such as creosote, carcinogens and other toxic chemicals and compounds into the garden soil.