How to Design a Raised Garden Bed

Do you want to grow your own food this season, but you're kind of afraid that the whole garden thing is going to be really ugly? In this video, I want to teach you exactly how to keep that from happening. I'm going to show you this step by step to design your own raised bed garden like a pro, so that it's not just functional, it's also gorgeous. These are the exact steps that I've used to design hundreds of gardens for my clients who own million dollar homes. So no matter what your budget is, I'm going to show you exactly what to do to create a raised bed garden that looks like a million dollars, no matter how much money you've got to spend on it. So I'm grabbing these steps from my first book, Kitchen Garden Revival. So if you've got it, go grab it. We're going to go through the first two chapters together, and if you don't have it yet, I'll put a link for it right below this video. So the first secret to making your garden look beautiful and gorgeous as well as productive is to figuring out the style. And we don't just do this by flipping through a mag or searching on Pinterest. We start by looking at our own home, apartment, townhouse. Wherever it is you're living, you want to identify the style of your home and then think about how you can match the garden to it. Now, this is a trick I learned from my mom. She's an interior designer. I grew up with her. If you can imagine, fixer upper back in the 80s. That was my life. So I watched her recreate, redesign all these homes. And I learned quickly from her that she would name each and every home and based on the style. So I borrowed that from her when I first started working in these gorgeous homes, because I'd kind of drive up and be a little intimidated. Like, these places were gorgeous. And I was tasked with putting a vegetable garden right in the backyard. So I'd start to look and, you know, observe the different features of the home and try to give the home a name. You want to think things like traditional or French or Georgian revival or farmhouse or modern farmhouse. There are so many different styles of homes, and if you're at a loss of what the name of the style your home is, you can just do a simple Google search, put in some of the features of your home, like arch doorway or covered patio, put in some of those features and then see what kind of names come out. I asked my mom when I was writing this book. I was like, Send me a couple of names of home styles. And y', all, she sent me, like, 50 names. I was like, we're going to put that in the appendix of the book. It's a little too much, but you want to identify the style of your home and then start thinking about your garden and how the style of your garden can match your home. Believe it or not, this is the secret to so many of the gardens that I've made. And it's the reason why a lot of times when people come and visit the vegetable gardens that I've created, they say, did this come with the home? Like, was the home and the garden built at the same time? That's the kind of feeling you want to have. If you want to have a beautiful raised bed garden, a beautiful vegetable garden. You want it to feel like it belongs. Like it belongs to the house. And you start to accomplish that when you identify the style first. So in chapter two, we talk about gathering the key elements for your kitchen garden design. And on page 48, I tell a funny little story about my first client, Jenny, who told me that her style was French, and I had literally no idea what she was talking about. So you can cover this chapter, read this, find out about the style of your home, and then you're ready for step number two. So have you ever seen those vegetable gardens where they look like they just, like, literally took a box and just plopped it right in the middle of the backyard? And you thought, that looks awkward? Yeah, me too. That was actually my first garden. As I worked with clients, I realized that gardens didn't have to look through. So awkward. In fact, I have a little hashtag, no more awkward gardens. Okay. So one of the ways we accomplish this is by starting to pay attention not just to the style of our home, but to the critical lines of our home. So this is step number two, and it's noticing the critical lines in your home and landscape. So you want to start to notice, where is the line of the home? Where is the line of the patio? Where's the line of the sidewalk? Where is the fence line? Any natural lines that already exist, we want to take note of them and see if we could use them as. As the main line for the garden space. When you use lines that already naturally exist in your landscape, whether visible or invisible, it's going to make the garden feel like it belongs to the house. And it's not just some box set out in the middle of the yard. I've done this with so many garden spaces that I've Designed. One of my first was with Lori, a client who had a covered porch. That's what it's called, screened in porch. And I use the lines of the screened in porch to line up the kitchen garden exactly with that porch porch. And let me tell you, the results were just so beautiful. She lived on the corner and she had an open lot where she just had, like a iron fence. So everybody. And this is a walking neighborhood, so everyone that walked by could see this garden. I was super nervous that it was going to look like an awkward box in the middle of the yard, but lining it up with the screen porch made it feel like it was part of the home, like it literally belonged right there. So pay attention to your own lines in your space with your house and with your yard, with your fence, with your doors, and try to see if you can line up the garden with those lines. It's going to feel like it belongs right away. So I start to talk about this in chapter one, under the heading of Aesthetic on page 24. And here I start to outline how you can find the natural lines of the house and tie them into the garden so that it feels like it's just part of the whole thing. So after you've identified your style and the lines in your space, it's time to move on to the next step. Still in chapter number one on page 20, we're moving on to step three, which is to make a map of your site. So once you have decided the lines of your yard and you're starting to think through how the garden could belong, you want to map out the most important aspects of the garden. Now, I would say for my priorities, for the way I set up the garden, it's a little different. I've already thought about the style and the lines of the home before. I'm picking my potential spots. I think most of us jump to this stage, and that's why our gardens look a little awkward. So first thing you want to think about, now that you've lined up your spaces and thought about potential places you can put the garden. Now you want to map where the sun is. So in your garden space, you want to map if you're in the northern hemisphere, where south is, and if you're in the southern hemisphere, where north is, because for half of the year, you're going to have a shadow on the garden from the south if you're in the northern hemisphere, and opposite if you're in the south. So marking where south is is going to show you. Okay. I want to be sure I'm on the southern side of tall things. So things like trees, things like homes, fences, buildings. Anything that's tall in your yard or space, you want to try to be on the southern side of it. Switch it. If you're in the southern hemisphere, okay. Next thing you want to pay attention to is water. So you want to have water as close to the garden as possible. If you've already got irrigation set up, that's great. If not, you want to mark where all the water spots are in your property, so. So that you know how far away the garden's going to be from that water source. The next thing that you want to mark out are any tall things. So we've already marked south, but now we want to think about where the trees are, where the house is, where the power lines are, anything that's above 6ft tall. Those are things we want to mark out on our map. Now, once we've considered all those things, the last thing you want to think about is convenience. So pathways and ways that you get in and out of your space, you want to mark those on your map as well. So if you have a driveway right next to the garden space, you're considering that, you know, you'll be in and out of. If there's kind of a walk that you take from the front to the backyard, if there's a walk you take, you know, any area of your space that's pretty easy for you to do, you want to kind of map those out on your spot as well. So you can see where whether or not you're going to be heading out to the garden naturally and just seeing it, even if you're not necessarily purposefully going to the garden, because we know that it's hard to push ourselves out into the garden sometimes, so we want it to be convenient. So I was working with my Chicago home when I wrote this book, and I had a garage right to the southern side. I had a side yard right there in between my house and my neighbors. Then I had a big backyard, but a lot of it was covered with trees. And then I also had a front yard that was somewhat open. So as I mapped out my locations, I actually considered three different spots for the garden. One right on my side yard right next to the home, one back in the backyard, which was much bigger, and one right in the front yard. And then I started to map out the sunlight. I mapped out where the water features were and what was most convenient to my doors and just my normal traffic flow. So you can do this for your own Garden space as well. And this map is on page 20 of Kitchen Garden Revival. If you haven't seen it yet, once you've got your map, you're ready to move on to step number four. Step four is when you pull it all together. So, based on your home style, you want to decide on the style of your raised beds, the style of your trellises, the style of your borders. You want to have a cottage garden if your home has a cottage feel, and a modern garden if your home has a modern feel. So. So you want that to be reflected as you select your raised beds, as you select all the elements of your garden. As you pick out all these parts of your garden, make sure they perfectly line up with the style of your home. Next, pick the lines in your location that you want to prioritize for the ones you'll line up with so that when we look onto your property, we can see this one line continues not just with the house, but also into the garden. And then you want to pick your location based on your map. Find the spot on the map that's got the most sun, the most convenience to water, and. And that, of course, is accessible and beautiful. After you've done all that, you're ready to lay out your garden design. And I've got five layouts for you to choose from in step five. Now, when we started our very first garden, we literally just went outside and put, like, a big rectangle in the yard, I mean, and called it a garden. I didn't realize until I started my business and making all these big gardens for clients that there were so many more ways to put garden beds together. And over the years, after creating dozens, if not hundreds of gardens, I started to have these categories, these designs that I called my own and that I would give clients a chance to choose from. So I outlined these in my book in chapter two, I think, starting on page 30, and I want to show them to you as well. So the first is a border garden. This is probably the most popular with the most of my clients, because a lot of them, they want to keep their lawn for their kids to play in, or they have a swimming pool, or they're just not quite sure they want to commit a large part of the yard to a garden. And rather than putting a box right in the middle of the yard, we go along the border of the landscape. So we would put a garden either along the driveway or along the fence line or even along the house. I call these border gardens because they're meant to, like, hug against the Lines that already exist in your home and landscape, and they do just that. And that's what keeps them from feeling awkward. So if you want to start small with just one or two beds, highly recommend a border garden. These are so beautiful. They make the most of your space and they'll never look awkward. The next option I call the twin garden, and this is simply two beds right together. Now, I'm standing in a small part of my bigger garden, but this on its own is essentially a twin garden. One raised bed here, that's a 4x8. One raised bed here, that's a 4x8. And two arch trellises. When you think about twins, you literally want to think identical. So these two beds are the exact same set up as a pair. And that's where the power starts to come in and making your garden feel more beautiful and more like it was designed by a pro. Instead of just one big bed, having two beds connected with an arch trellis totally up levels the space. The next one is a garden trio. My mom, the designer, she loves putting things in sets of threes, and I can see why after I've done a few gardens this way. My Chicago garden was actually six gardens, but I call it a garden trio because it was essentially three sets of two beds. So it's basically garden trio times two. So anytime you have sets of three, they're going to have this really unique feeling to them. I did these stone beds that were in a circle, and it was three of them turned out so beautiful. So if you've got a round space or if you've got an unusually long space, then a garden trio may just be be the fit. In my Chicago garden, it was only like 10ft wide, but it was 30ft long. So it was a perfect layout opportunity for a garden trio. Next up is what I call the four garden classic. So these are four beds, all the same size, laid up together. And this is probably my most popular design. It's been featured by Better Homes and Gardens and a lot of other fancy. This old house loved it too. So I call it a classic for a reason. Because a lot of English gardens, gardens that you watch online, they are four beds, just all lined up, all the same size. So if you're looking for that traditional feel, or if you just want something, even a cottage feel, four gardens all together that are identical set up either going the long way or the short way, or even just four squares can be a great design for a garden. And last but not least is the formal protege. So I had to call in the French language for this one because it's so fancy. So this one is 4L shaped beds. And then you'll have a feature in the middle. If you've got a really large space that you're trying to fill, this is a great design for it. And it's going to truly make your garden feel like it's an outdoor room. You walk in through the arch trellises and you're suddenly enclosed in the entirety by the garden. So this is 4L shapes with something in the middle, like a fountain or an herb box, or you can even have a bench or a little seating area there with chairs and a table. With these five designs, you can use these as building blocks that you can put together and design that is unique to you. But even these five designs are all perfect to just stand on their own. We have literally created hundreds of gardens with just these five designs. If you want to see me put a garden together from start to finish, like literally drawing it out on paper to walking into the finished product, I have the perfect video for you to watch and it's right here. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. You can keep listening anywhere. You love getting your podcast delivered. I on Apple, podcasts, on Spotify, iHeartRadio, you name it, we are there for you. And if you want to read the notes and get our free resources to help you grow more, you can go to gardenary.com podcast.