Raised Bed

There’s no better feeling than planning a project and then pulling it off successfully. I love working with my hands – and in the summer of 2017 I decided that I wanted to build something. This raised bed – a 3m x 1m timber structure, filled with about a tonne of soil, sits proudly obscuring a brick wall at my parents’ home in London.

This project was dreamt up to solve two problems:

1. From the kitchen window, where you stands to do the washing up, directly ahead is a blank brick wall. Why not fill this with some greenery or flowers?
2. The summer was long and I wanted to find something useful to do – give myself a purpose (and a reason to get out of bed before noon…)

It is designed to be demountable – using galvanised screws and easily removable connections. The decking boards came to just around £130, for which I was very pleased to have the support of my Dad to pay for them! Tools were kept simple – a handsaw, electric drill and sander.

I designed the structure on SketchUp, which allowed me to estimate how many boards I’d need. It’s great to be able to create digital prototypes as pitfalls and issues can quickly be identified and solutions developed.

Designed and manufactured in 2017, planted out in the spring of 2018 and still going strong as we move into 2024 – it’s really nice to see something you’ve built stand firmly and proudly – weathering in with its surroundings.