How to Build Your Own Elevated Garden Bed

Raised garden beds offer many advantages even if they simply sit at ground level, but the advantages multiply if you build an elevated garden bed that puts the soil level at waist high or even higher. Especially for older gardeners or others with physical limitations, eliminating the need to stoop makes gardening — whether you're planting for an herb garden, a vegetable garden or a planter filled with perennials — much more fun and rewarding. As with any raised bed, this method of gardening allows you to use a growing medium that is perfectly tailored for growing plants without the weed seeds or pathogens that are often found in ordinary garden soil.

It is, of course, possible to buy a premade elevated garden bed instead of spending time on a DIY project, but these can cost hundreds of dollars. Commercially built elevated planters are often quite attractive, but they are sometimes built with a shocking lack of sturdiness and flimsy "floors" that bow and crash down the first time the soil inside becomes saturated by a heavy rain.

The materials for building your own DIY elevated garden bed cost a fraction of what a commercial elevated planter costs, and you'll end up with a bed that is extremely sturdy and durable.

This design uses ordinary 2x cedar dimension lumber for most of the construction. These materials can be purchased off the shelf at virtually any big-box home center. The design could not be simpler (perfect for those who are just getting started on woodworking), and the dimensions can be easily adjusted to make a larger or smaller elevated garden bed.

This elevated planter is basically just a simple box made of 2x6 and 2x4 cedar lumber attached horizontally around four vertical 4x4 cedar posts, forming an elevated planter whose top is roughly at waist level. For a more ornamental look, the edges of the cedar side boards can be rounded over with a router before you attach them to the posts.

Across the bottom of the box, three joists made of cedar 2x4 lumber span the width of the box, providing support for a floor of 5/4 x 6 cedar planks. This floor, supported by the joists, will provide plenty of strength for holding the potting mix, even when saturated with water.

This is the biggest advantage this DIY design has over many commercial elevated planters. Commercial planters are often built with narrow cleats attached to the inside surface of the box to hold the floor, a design that's not nearly sturdy enough to hold water-saturated soil, which can weigh well over a hundred pounds. Nothing is more disappointing than spending $400 on a purchased raised planter only to have it collapse under the weight of the soil.

The dimensions used in this tutorial will create an elevated planter bed that is roughly 3 feet wide and 4 feet long with the top of the planter standing about 4 feet above the ground. If you change the dimensions — making it larger, taller or shorter — it's a good idea to make simple sketches of the side, end and top views of the planter so you can accurately determine your own dimensions. For a gardener who is tending plants from a wheelchair, 24 to 30 inches is the ideal height for the elevated bed.

An elevated planter bed is often built from pressure-treated pine lumber, which will be very durable. Many garden experts recommend avoiding lumber treated with pesticides for any planter that will grow edibles, fearing that the toxins may be taken up by the roots of the plants. In truth, modern pressure-treated lumber no longer uses the highly toxic chromate copper arsenate that was once common. Today's pressure-treated lumber is regarded as safe for growing edibles, though it may be a good idea to line the inside of a pressure-treated planter box with heavy-grade plastic sheeting to be utterly safe.

This planter is built from cedar lumber, which has a natural resistance to pests and decay — perfect for a veggie garden or for growing your own food. The inside of the box is coated with an ordinary water-based penetrating sealer, and synthetic landscape fabric is used as an inner liner to prevent soil from seeping out through cracks and drainage holes.

This list gives finished dimensions for the actual parts that will be used in construction of the elevated garden bed. You will likely want to buy lumber in standard 8- or 12-foot lengths and then cut your pieces from those stock boards. For example, all four 3-foot-long boards can be cut from a single 12-foot-long board, and the four 4-foot-long boards can be cut from two 8-foot boards. If you want, though, most home centers will cut the lumber to the exact sizes you want, though they sometimes charge a small fee to do this.