Raised-Bed Garden Layout & Design Made Easy

When I first started my kitchen garden design company, Rooted Garden, I thought that designing a kitchen garden meant placing a wooden box in the middle of someone's yard (and if they had lots of room, we'd do two boxes). It didn't take me long to discover that gardens, like homes, can actually come in many different styles, sizes, and layouts.

After designing hundreds of garden spaces, I've narrowed my favorite designs down to the top five that I've found work well in spaces both functionally and aesthetically.

The size and shape of the yard space that you have available will play a big factor in helping to determine which is the best raised-bed garden layout for you. Let me show you how to design a beautiful raised-bed garden like a pro.

Our Top Five Most-Used Kitchen Garden Layouts

My kitchen garden design company turns to these five layouts again and again:

• The Border Garden
• The Twin Garden
• The Garden Trio
• The Four-Garden Classic
• The Formal Potager

Now, let's look at each layout and how this type of garden might fit into your space.

The Border Garden Is the Best Layout for Small Spaces

The border garden is—just as it sounds—a garden positioned along the border of your landscape or against a structure like a fence, a driveway, or a house.

The goal of the border garden design is to avoid something I call the "awkward garden." You know that box sitting in the middle of the yard all by itself? That box that sticks out from the rest of the landscape instead of feeling like an essential component? This type of awkward garden is what a lot of people still picture when they think of vegetable gardens, and we garden designers are aiming to change that. Gardens should feel like they belong to the space.

The Ideal Space for a Border Garden

A border garden is the best option for you if you’re limited in space or not ready to commit to a larger garden. Many of my clients choose a border garden when they want to preserve most of their lawn for other things, like room for their children to play, swimming pools, or outdoor seating.

Border gardens are easy to slide into smaller spaces like side yards. You’ll need a minimum of 1.5' of width and at least 6 feet in length available to make the most of this layout. Three sides of the garden will typically be accessible, but the other will be against your home, fence, or other structure that will block access.

You can have a single raised bed or several. When I go with two raised beds for a border garden, I like to add something to the middle, such as a bench or a large pot for a citrus tree or bay laurel.

Examples of Border Gardens

These three raised beds fit around the outdoor seating area.

We placed raised beds on both sides of this alley. This garden took an underutilized space and turned it into something special.

Here's another Border Garden that fits right between the driveway and the fence. Designing a garden in this kind of space is easy because the driveway serves as one line for the garden perimeter. You don't need steel edging to separate the garden. You can stand on the driveway to tend the garden, or if the space is wide enough, you could use gravel to create a little one-foot-wide walkway between the driveway and the raised bed.

The Best Type of Trellis to Use in a Border Garden

I typically use panel trellises positioned at the back of the Border Garden. You could instead place several obelisk trellises down the length of the bed, as we did in this L-shaped Border Garden.

Border Gardens are a great way to get started with a garden or to add more growing space to your existing setup. They turn unused spaces into functional and beautiful gardens that are, in no way, awkward or lonely.

Border gardens quickly became our most popular garden design layout. They're affordable, they fit in almost any space, and they're beginner-friendly. You won't feel like you're over-committing to a garden. You'll have just what you need to start growing a little bit of your own food.

The Twin Garden Is a Simple Garden Bed Layout

If you’ve got space and can dedicate some of your central lawn to a kitchen garden, a Twin Garden might be your go-to garden layout. Unless you're doing a Border Garden, you typically don't want to have one garden bed all by itself in the middle of the yard. That's why I almost always choose a minimum of two gardens unless the landscape just doesn’t allow it.

The Ideal Space for a Twin Garden

Twin gardens provide a symmetrical layout that makes the most of a yard that’s deeper than it is wide (or wider than it is deep).

Twin gardens also allow you to maximize the growing space inside this larger garden area while creating more interest and appeal than a single garden provides. The word garden originally meant a sense of enclosure, and standing between two garden beds really makes you feel like you are, in fact, inside a garden space.

Pathways at least two feet wide around the raised beds are key to being able to move around the twin garden space.

The Best Type of Trellis to Use in a Twin Garden

One of our most-used designs features two raised beds—mirror images of each other—joined by one or two arch trellises. It's so simple and elegant. You could always add some obelisk trellises to further increase your overall growing space.

Use this garden layout in your backyard if you want your garden to feel like it was designed by a pro. In all honesty, it was! You're just taking my design and making it work in your own space.

A Garden Trio Design Makes the Most of Oddly Shaped Spaces in Your Backyard

What if you have an area that's roughly circular or very long? That sounds like a good option for a Garden Trio. My mom is an interior designer, and she always says to put things in groups of threes.

The garden below is one of my favorite designs I've ever gotten to do. It was difficult to measure out, but once we got it right, it really made the most of a roughly circular space in the backyard. I texted my husband after installation and said, "This is the most beautiful thing I've ever made in my life," and he was like, "What about our children?" Oops! "Oh, never mind!" I said.

The Ideal Space for a Garden Trio

If your garden space is longer than it is wide, or if it’s more circular and curved, a Garden Trio may be the perfect solution. This garden layout allows you to squeeze in as many beds as possible into a space.

I had a really long space along the side of my home in Chicago (it was just 10 feet wide but 30 feet long). My initial plan was to run three beds down the side, but when I drew it out, I thought it looked so cool that I decided to double it. So I actually did two sets of three beds to fill this space.

Keep in mind that if you want to have curved raised beds in your Garden Trio, you'll have to order custom-made steel beds (like the Corten steel raised beds pictured below) or build the raised beds out of stone.

The Best Type of Trellis to Use in a Garden Trio

This design works really well with arch trellises. I love connecting three beds in a circle with three arch trellises. Or you could do three obelisk trellises in each of your three beds.

Every time I get to line up three gardens in a row or connect three round raised beds with arch trellises, I'm reminded why there's the rule of three in design.

The Four Garden Classic Is My Favorite Garden Design with Raised Beds

Just between us, this is my favorite layout. Functionally, four distinct gardens give you the option of separating crops and plants more methodically. And aesthetically, four gardens are absolute perfection in terms of kitchen garden design.

The Ideal Space for a Four-Garden Classic

The Four-Garden Classic is a great layout for a space that’s square, or nearly square, in shape and at least 15 feet wide.

Popular raised bed sizes for this layout include 4x4 beds, 4x8 beds or 4x10 beds, and every bed should be equal in size. Even with 4x4 beds, you'll have 64 total square feet of growing space, which will allow you to grow a ton.

The Best Type of Trellis to Use in a Four-Garden Classic

If the four beds are square, you could put an obelisk trellis in the middle of each one. No matter what size the beds are, you can connect them with arch trellises. This not only ties your beds together, it also creates a grand entrance to your garden space.

If you have the space for a Four-Garden Classic, you're basically creating an outdoor room with raised beds for walls. The feeling you’ll have standing inside your Four-Garden Classic is magical and truly an escape from reality.

The Formal Potager Is the Ultimate Garden Layout

This is the mother of all garden designs. Formal potagers are so large and ornate we had to call in the French language to help us describe them. (Potager is just French for kitchen garden.)

Potagers go well beyond a few raised gardens and include additional features such as fountains, fruit trees, seating areas, and more.

The Ideal Space for a Formal Potager

If your landscape allows for a total garden area that’s more than 20' wide and long, you have space to create a Formal Potager. Potagers include L-shaped raised beds that form a sort of enclosure inside.

The overall layout usually ends up being rectangular, but you could also do a square Formal Potager if that works best with your space.

The Best Type of Trellis to Use in a Formal Potager

I love connecting the L-shaped raised beds with arch trellises. You could create four grand entrances to your garden—super magical—or you could have two on the same orientation.

You can add obelisk trellises in the corners to really maximize your growing space. You also have the center of the garden to consider. I've added an extra square raised bed with an obelisk or panel trellis to the middle of the garden before. The options are really limitless with this layout.

If you go with this layout, hiring a garden consultant is a great idea. The characteristic L-shaped raised beds, which are so important to creating corners of the garden so that you feel like you're inside an enclosure, are a bit more complicated to build.

I can promise you the added complications in design and installation will be so worth it. Your Formal Potager will become your private getaway, your favorite room in your house, the place you host all your future parties. It'll be the focal point of your life.

Pick the Design That Works Best for Your Space

So, which of these layouts will maximize your growing space and suit your home and landscape best?

From just these five core garden layouts, you can create almost endless possibilities. Combine them like Lego pieces to suit your space perfectly. You could put a Garden Trio inside a Formal Potager; you could add an L-shaped Border Garden around a Twin Garden. Now that you know these five layouts, you can create something truly wonderful and customized to your space.

Remember this: It matters what your garden looks like. I know gardens serve many practical purposes like giving us food, but when it comes down to it, if you think your garden is beautiful, you're going to go out there a lot more. So design it to be beautiful from the beginning. Take time to lay your garden out like a pro with one or more of these designs to fit your space. It'll make a world of difference in the garden that you get to enjoy for many years to come.

For more garden design help, check out my book, Kitchen Garden Revival, or find a Gardenary-trained garden consultant near you.

I can't wait to see the gardens that you create. Be sure to tag me @gardenaryco on Instagram so I can see your wonderful new garden space.

I hope these layouts help you create something you love as much as I love mine!