Let's Gather the Materials You'll Need to Create Your Garden

You've figured out the best location for your dream garden and made a lot of decisions about layout and overall design. Now, it's time to gather all your materials.

If you're building and installing raised beds, re-measure your total garden area and the size you'd like each raised bed to be to ensure you order the right amount of wood, steel, or stone. This is a great time to hire help or get an expert to assist you. 

If you're just installing in-ground raised beds, skip down to the information on borders and pathways and then you can jump to Part 6 to learn more about filling your garden with soil.

Let's start with the most important measurement of all: the total square footage of your future garden area. To get this number, measure the length and width of the space you've devoted to your new garden. Then, multiply the width by the length of the entire garden space to know the total garden square footage.

Now, let's look more into what kind of raised beds, trellises, borders, and pathways you'll be ordering and how to measure your space appropriately so you're buying materials that will work for you.

How to Measure Raised Bed Material

You can create your raised beds with a wide variety of materials, including wood, metal, stone, and brick.

Refer back to your design decisions in Part 2 to ensure you're selecting a raised bed material that will be durable but also beautiful.

Now, let's look at how to measure material for different types of raised beds.

Wood Raised Beds

Even with the price of lumber going up each day, wood is still the least expensive material for your garden boxes. It's also a pretty easy way to get started growing in raised beds. Trust me, you don't need advanced carpentry skills (I sure don't, and I've made plenty of raised beds). I'll walk you through how to make a wood raised bed in Part 4.

I recommend using untreated wood and doing a little research to determine an affordable wood that won't decay quickly, such as cedar, redwood, or hemlock. The best choice depends on your geographical location, so be sure to find the most locally sourced wood you can. Read more on the best types of wood for raised beds.

How to Buy Wood for Your Raised Beds

Once you've figured out what type of wood you'll be using, head to the hardware store or your local lumber yard (if you're building quite a few beds) and buy the thickest pieces of wood you can afford. This will greatly improve the durability of your raised beds, especially if you live in a rainy climate.

Here's a primer on lumber measurements: The first number is the thickness of the board in inches; the second number is the height of the board in inches; and the third number is the length of the board in feet. So a 2 x 6 x 8 is 2 inches thick (though you'll see it's not really a full 2 inches), 6 inches wide, and 8 feet long. A 2 x 6 x 8 cedar plank, by the way, is a popular board to use for raised beds. Stacking four boards on top of each other will get you 2-foot-tall beds.

Here's the calculation for how to determine how many 2 x 6 x 8 cedar planks you'll need to build your box:

So if you want to build a 7' x 2.5' x 2' cedar box, here's your calculation:

Length: (7 x 2) x 4 = 56

Width: (2.5 x 2) x 4 = 20

Total feet of wood needed: 76

Number of boards needed: 76/8 = 10 (rounded up)

Tips to Buy Wood for Your Raised Beds

Before you head home, inspect each board for discoloration, defects, and straightness. The longer the board, the more likely there’s a curve. These are, after all, natural products. You want to work with the straightest boards possible.

Double check all your measurements to make sure you have the right amount of wood.

If you need to cut any of the boards, ask the store if they'll cut lumber for you (many of them do, and I've taken advantage of this service many times to ensure I get the straightest cuts).

If you're buying a wood raised bed kit, make sure to find kits that use the highest quality of wood possible.

Steel Raised Beds

Though steel tends to be more expensive than wood, there are still options for steel raised beds on the inexpensive side. I've made tons of planters from stainless steel containers, both large and small. Actually, one of the first small kitchen gardens I installed was a repurposed water trough made of stainless steel. I added drainage holes and casters to the bottom so the beds could be rolled across the patio. You can easily make this type of rolling steel planter on your own.

The real treat for me as a garden designer is when clients have the budget for Corten steel or powder coated steel raised beds. Although steel is made from mined iron, it’s a sustainable resource because it can be completely recycled. And yes, it's totally safe to garden in steel raised beds. Some steel may be treated with zinc for durability, but there’s little to no chance this will affect the organic nature of your soil. 

Steel gardens will, literally, last a lifetime—and then some. And one thing I love about garden beds made with steel is the small footprint of the bed itself. If you’re growing in a small space and want to maximize your growing area, a steel bed enables you to give nearly all the space to your plants while still having a super strong garden bed that will never give up growing. 

Unless you're a metal worker, you'll need to buy a steel raised bed or order a custom piece that fits your space. You can find kits in all shapes and sizes online that require minimum assembly. Look for steel that hasn’t been coated with synthetic chemicals.

Learn more about steel raised beds.

Brick & Stone Raised Beds

Another beautiful option we use for bed materials is stone or brick. You can do something as basic as cement blocks, or you can chose bricks, landscape stone, or natural rock and dry stack the stones on a leveled sand bed. For a more durable bed, add a cement footer under your stones or bricks.

I always recommend starting fresh with new materials and only buying stone that hasn’t been chemically altered. I wouldn't use bricks or cinder blocks that I didn't know the history of, since older materials can be dangerous for a number of reasons.

To calculate how much stone or brick you'll need, determine the length of the material you're using, if it's uniform. Divide the length and width of your desired raised bed size by the length of the material. Add the results together and then multiply it by two. That's how much you'll need for one layer of material. Determine how many stones or bricks you'll need to stack to get your desired height, and then multiply your result by that number. Double check your calculations before you bring any material home.

A stone or brick garden can be here for generations to come.

How to Measure Trellises

Gather your trellises before you install your kitchen garden. Placing the trellis in your garden before the soil is completely installed will help ensure it's nice and secure in its spot. 

I’ve learned the hard way not to wait until the garden is installed to add the trellises, especially if you're doing an arch trellis. There has been one too many times we’ve had to dig loads of soil out of the garden to retrofit a structure, and trust me—it’s not fun. 

Trellises, essentially, come in three different shapes (at least according to me): panel, obelisk, and arch. When selecting a trellis, look for those with thin wires that small pea and cucumber tendrils can grab easily. Also look for only small breaks from one section of the trellis to the next. Most plants will gain just a few inches of growth from week to week and will need a new rung to cling to at each stage. (If you fall in love with a trellis that has large breaks, it's totally fine. You can run twine around the base to help your climbing plants out.)

For vining plants, the taller the trellis, the better. Trellises for growing indeterminate tomatoes and cucumbers should be about 6 to 8 feet tall, unless you’re a pro basketball point guard, in which case you could stretch it to 9 or 10 feet. I've definitely had to get on a ladder to tend plants growing over tall arch trellises before. You can use shorter trellises (4 to 5 feet) to support peppers, eggplants, or bush tomatoes.

If you plan to span an arch trellis from one raised bed to another, double check the dimensions of the trellis and your pathway. You can always push a trellis deeper into the interior of each raised bed if your pathway is much more narrow than your trellis.

How to Measure the Border of Your Garden Space

Your garden border will keep your garden separate from the rest of your lawn and landscape. You’ll set up the border first when you install your new garden, so it’s important to order or gather your border material early in the process. You can create borders with stone, brick, or landscape material, or simply use steel edging. You don't need to add a border alongside a sidewalk or driveway unless you need something a little taller to hold your garden pathway material in place.

To calculate the amount of material you’ll need for the border, measure the entire perimeter of your garden space. Make sure to include all the surrounding edges of the garden, the pathways, and any other feature that would add to the measurement of the whole space.

If you're using steel edging, measure the perimeter distance and divide it by the length of each steel edging piece. You can generally get edging in 10-foot pieces. Keep in mind that edges overlap so that might only cover about 8 feet. It's always best to order a bit more than you need.

How to Measure Pathway Materials

Clear the way to your garden space with a pathway. Your goal should be to walk comfortably to and from your garden and work alongside your raised beds without bumping into anything. We generally aim for about 3-foot wide pathways, including between raised beds. If you're creating a border garden, I suggest providing at least 1 foot of pathway along the side of the garden so you’re not standing awkwardly in wet sod or dirt.

At Gardenary, we almost always use gravel for the pathway material. Gravel provides a clean area that will be free of weeds and other vegetation; plus, it drains quickly and requires little upkeep. Gravel also makes it easy to level your raised beds. Finally, gravel provides added protection for your raised garden bed, particularly a wood bed, as it keeps the raised bed material from sitting on wet dirt or sod. This prolongs the life of your garden by years.

There are other materials you can use, such as pine straw, moss, turf, or stone, but my recommendation is gravel. Mulch will continuously decompose, which means you'll need a new installment each year, and my experience has shown that pests love to hide in mulch. If you do use mulch, my recommendation is pine straw instead of hardwood mulch. Pine straw won’t attract as many pests and won’t decompose as quickly. But, if you have the budget, I highly recommend gravel instead. 

As part of your garden pathway, you may want to include stepping stones. Though gravel is practical and makes the garden space clean, it’s not the best for bare feet. For this reason, many of our clients opt to add large stepping stones to the garden area. These stones should be ordered and secured at this stage so they can be leveled appropriately with gravel around them.

Be sure to pick stones large enough to hold your entire foot at once (minimum 1 foot in length). And be certain to do the math to ensure you have enough stones to create a symmetrical distribution throughout the garden pathways. 

Use the calculation below to determine how much gravel you'll need for your pathway.

Time to Gather Your Materials

It’s time to check all your measurements and place your orders. Gathering your materials is great retail therapy if you love shopping.... and it's quite the chore if you hate making decisions. If you get stuck, ask for help. Try to keep your forward momentum going instead of lingering on any one decision too long. Use photos of gardens you love as inspiration.

You'll soon have all the components of a future garden sitting in your yard! (Don't worry, we'll calculate soil in Part 6.)

Next up, building a raised bed!