Few things in life are as rewarding as growing and eating your own food. The last part of the process is just as rewarding, but no one wants to talk about that.
Anyway, many of us have limited gardening space, or we want something that’s going to look as nice as it is functional. Raised garden beds are great because of how versatile they are. You can get wild and crazy, or stay structured and clean-looking.
The Beauty of DIY Garden Beds
We like garden beds at Home Depot and Lowe’s, but they can be more expensive than doing it yourself, and they don’t always have that personal touch that you might want in your gardening area.
Here are 25 DIY raised garden bed ideas that you can use to make a gardening area all your own. As you can see, there’s no limit to the ways you can build your garden bed, and by using all different types of supplies and materials, you can do something personal and unique.
The Metal Raised Garden Bed Starter
via Amazon
The foundation of every solid metal raised garden bed is a…well, raised garden bed. If you don’t want to spend time searching all over the place for the right metal container, check out something easy like this one. It’s something you can bury, or keep it above aground and accentuate the metal shine.
You can also incorporate it into more complex and advanced gardens by combining it with other natural and man-made elements. In the end, it’s one of the easiest ways to get started on your raised garden bed.
Make it Easy to Walk Through
The problem with some garden beds is that if they are too wide on either side, it can be difficult to get in there and pull plants, pick veggies and the like. With this kind of setup, you can avoid that hassle and make sure that you can reach any of your plants at any time.
We also really like the idea of putting small lights on the corners of your garden bed.
Tin + Wood = Great Style
via project alicia
This bad boy from Project Alicia goes to show that you don’t need to constrict yourself to using only wood. The look of the tin and wood here makes a great contrast and your plants are bound to love it too.
Contain Your Plants
via gardenista
Sometimes the best DIY approach to a garden bed is using containers that you already have around. In this case, these containers are tall and wide enough to offer plenty of surface area and growing depth to allow the plants to thrive.
You can also paint, stain or otherwise change the colors of your container to make it really pop.
The Wine Box Garden
Not only do we love this idea because it allows you to separate each plant, but using these neat wine boxes gives it a little extra touch. Neighbors or friends might think they are in rural France, but no: they are in your garden. Touche.
Galvanized Gardens
via remodelista
This type of garden bed continues on the theme of using whatever’s around you.
In this case, these galvanized metal containers make perfect beds, and they have that cool urban look that tells people you have no excuse for not having a garden, no matter where you live.
With urban gardening and farming becoming more common and innovative, it’s interesting to see what kind of garden beds and container gardens pop up in big cities across the country.
We live in the suburbs, so we can’t say for sure, but if we were big city dwellers, this would probably make us a little hot under the collar if you know what we mean.
And we think you do.
Weave Something
via instructables
This is an extremely unique approach to a bed, and one that we think might take a couple tries before you can really get it right. But once you do – whoa boy, watch out!
These have a natural, almost primitive look to them and we think they’d be great conversation pieces, especially if that conversation was with a fellow gardener.
Pallet Garden Part I
via lovelygreens
If you love to grow strawberries or other fruits and vegetables that need a little open space, a pallet-crate garden is perfect. The spaces between the pallet boards are thin enough to give your plants room to grow, but not too wide that the whole thing falls out one day and you wonder why you planted it in that thing to begin with.
We love strawberries, by the way.
Concrete and Cool
via diycontemporary
For those of us who enjoy the cool, sleek look of concrete blocks, this concept allows you to make a garden with design in mind. It’s a simple, no-frills approach that allows you to stack and divide different plants while maintaining a clean gardening area. Neat.
Let’s Get Basic
For the less-is-more approach, all you really need is some wood and a nice piece of backyard to lay down your raised garden bed. This one offers great step-by-step instructions on how they made their simple raised garden look wonderful.
Tabletop Garden
via bareroot girl
We love this idea because it’s extremely functional: not only does it hold a garden, but it also allows you to organize your gardening stuff.
You could take this even further by putting wheels on the bottom of this bad boy, allowing it to be mobile. This is a nice feature to have if, depending on the weather or the layout of your yard, you need to continually move your plants around for optimal sunlight and water.
The Dog-Friendly Garden
If you like gardens there’s a chance you also like animals, and if you happen to have a dog, this is a great idea to avoid mixing business with pleasure, if you catch our drift.
These dog-friendly dog beds are raised enough to prevent your dog from peeing on your plants, and with a few other handy features, makes a great centerpiece for any garden.
Redwood Beauty
This redwood raised garden is gorgeous: the red of the lumber and the green of the plants makes an excellent contrast and it probably smells good too. Right?
Garden on the Go
Although this looks like a meme, it’s actually a picture of a great idea: putting casters on your raised garden beds.
As we mentioned earlier, you may need to move your garden around for optimal growing, and this setup allows you to do that relatively easily. If you have a yard or growing area with concrete, blocks or other hard areas, this is a great way to keep a mobile, functional garden growing.
Brick and Mortar
via my honey’s place
While this project will take more time and effort, the look of the brick and mortar is extremely unique, and we really dig the windows on it. This is great for those climates where outdoor growing is limited by cold weather and so on.
To us, it also looks like if you moved the plants, there might be a room hidden underneath. And that’s always a nice thought.
Irrigation Done Right
We’re not sure what impresses us most about this raised garden bed. But let’s start with the irrigation: it looks nice, and it makes watering a large number of plants a lot easier. This blog post goes into detail, but there are plenty of irrigation setups you can install depending on your watering needs.
Boxes, Boxes, Everywhere
via a creative momma
The tiered look, combined with the unique setup of the overall layout makes this a one-of-a-kind garden. The walking pathway in between everything makes it easy to reach all your plants, and with tiers at all different levels, you don’t necessarily have to do a lot of bending over to reap your gardening rewards.
Decorative Raised Gardens
via whole home news
This garden bed proves that you don’t have to be boring with your setup. The ornamental corners and the bright red paint make these beds really stand out from the greenery around them. How wonderful would it be to spend an afternoon sitting on one of these? Very.
The Maze Garden
Not really a maze, though it looks like it at first site. This bed allows you to reach all over the growing area from inside or outside the garden, and we dig that. We also like the natural wood look. We like it all.
Anything Goes
via planet natural
This garden shows that you can do more than one option for your growing area. With different types of containers and walk-through path, this garden offers all the convenience of a traditional raised bed, but with the eclectic look of something totally unique.
Stairway to Herbs
For limited space, this is a great way to divide your plants into many areas without having to take up much ground room.
Contain Yourself
If you’re short on supplies or a gardening budget, consider finding items like these sturdy containers, which you can often find at the back of grocery stores and the like.
They’ll do just as good keeping in the soil while allowing enough room to breathe, and you can paint or decorate them as you wish.
Fancy and Free
These are made from olive oil barrels, and the tops have been spiraled into the unique designs you see. These aren’t just for the eyeballs, however – if you have plants like tomatoes, you can use the materials to keep the plants steady and growing skyward.
Pallet Garden Part II
While the first pallet bed was smaller, for things like strawberries, this type of bed can give you more space and depth for larger plants. The natural wood of the pallets looks great against the plants.
Tin + Wood Part II
We love the tin and wood look, and this 3-piece beauty takes our love to a whole new level. The metal gives the garden a nice, sleek look, but not too modern, because the wood is like, hey, I’m still here too.
Crate Garden
Like the strawberry example above, this quaint little garden gives you some open space for plants that love to breathe and get wild. If you find enough crates, you can put them in rows or even stack a few and use the highest one as your garden.
The DIY Raised Garden Bed In Our Dreams
We love all these examples, but we know there’s still plenty of garden beds out there that haven’t been made yet. We’d like to see one that uses round corrugated metal, some wood and some hooks to hang your gardening stuff on.
That’s what we’re working on. What kind of garden bed would you like to see next?
