jones wrote:
My garden beds are ground level, and because of age and a bad back, I would
like to build/make higher ones.

It has been suggested to me to make the back wall of the beds out from the
fences in case in the future, the palings needs to come out, then it will
make life easier to work on the fencing.

I intend to make the walls of these beds out of bricks. How far away from
the fences would you suggest to come out.

Thanks for your help
Katherine


*Such* a great idea! My DH has made me four raised garden beds and
garden work is much easier as a result. My beds are made from Bunnings'
sleepers (150mm x 50mm x 1.5m). We made them three sleepers deep (ie
450mm) with an additional 50mm plank placed on top to form a bench seat.
This has turned out to be an excellent feature, as our teenaged
daughter's friends like to have barbecues in the yard and seating is no
problem at all! There's plenty, all along the garden beds!

My beds are each a metre wide, but that's really too wide for comfort.
It's quite difficult to stretch that far across, so I'd recommend no
wider than 600mm (that's my farthest comfortable reach). I have a
mower's width between my beds and that works quite well. We started out
with just two beds hard against the fence, but it didn't take long to
realise I'd need more! Two more are in place and ready to be planted,
and another two will go against the opposite fence (eventually). Poor
DH's aching back... Anyway, I planted alyssum, native violets, parsley
and chamomile around the bottoms of the beds and so far it's working
well to stop grass from uglifying the surrounds.

If you're concerned about your fencing, then I'd be inclined to leave a
comfortable mower's width for access *unless* you used a brick or
masonry wall for the garden's edge and thus had the option of using it
for a fence-foundation later on (ie build a paling or other fence on top
of it). My beds are hard against the (corro) fence, but that's no
problem as our neighbour's land is much higher than ours and butts
against the fence equally on the other side. One day, the old fence will
go and we'll work things out then.

Another thing I've done with my beds was tacking up some old reo for my
tomatoes and beans to climb up. The lower bed will have a climbing rose,
so an extra sheet of reo's coming from the demolition place soon. With
the beds up so high, it was as easy as anything to put in a sprinkler
system. In this way, I can water each bed separately or all of them
together (this doesn't work as well because of water pressure). We had
to block off access to the beds by putting chicken wire around for a
while - we have a bull terrier and she was in doggie heaven with all
that fresh dirt around! She terriered great holes in it and came out
grinning like a mad thing!

Just FYI, it took about eight yards of soil to fill four beds, each
500mm x 1m x 1.5m. We bit the bullet and got a good organic mix and I'm
so glad we did - the drainage has been perfect and weeds barely evident.
I put broken tiles and bricks in the bottoms of the beds (our block is
very boggy in the winter and tends not to drain very well) and this has
worked beautifully when it rains: the drainage is spot-on! I mulched at
first with rotted grass clippings but have since found that straw works
much better. Gotta find a good source of el cheapo straw!

The best result of our new garden beds has been a *huge* increase in the
wildlife that visits our yard. We have numerous kinds of lizards and
frogs and have recently hosted a nervously large black snake (hoping
he's moved on now - haven't seen him in a few days). The frogs have been
funny... we installed the garden pond that DH gave me tiddly-pom years
ago as a wedding anniversary gift. Not *one* frog has been for a bath in
it, yet hordes of the little buggers are pokk-pokk-pokking in a few
bucketsful of cannas and hippeastrums that are waiting to be planted
out. So many, in fact, that I'm reluctant to disturb the froggies by
moving the plants! Y'can't win... =:-0

Oh! One last thing! Bunnings carries a very inexpensive range of
long-handled tools. They're only about $5 each and you can get a trowel,
a fork and a cultivator. These have been perfect for reaching across my
garden beds, but be warned: you do get what you pay for and the tools
aren't terribly strong. Treated with a little care, though, they've been
fine for my purposes.

HTH,

--
Trish Brown {|:-}

Newcastle, NSW, Australia