RE: Elevate Garden Beds

Len,
 

1) This was excerpted from a response to a similar request (i.e., how to create a regular raised) by Jack Hale, a master gardener and CG garden program administrator:

"In our smaller gardens on bad soil, we often build raised beds that are 4' by 8' and a foot deep. We use recycled plastic landscape timbers that are about 3" thick. It takes 12 timbers, 4 of them cut in half, plus about 30 6" galvanized twist deck spikes to make one bed. It holds just over 1 yard of soil. I figure a little over $100 per bed when I'm budgeting. There are cheaper ways to do raised beds - making them bigger, for instance - but this size is very solid and easy to build. A group of people can pick them up and move them after they have been constructed. They make a nice manageable unit within the garden."

Note: The plastic landscape timbers are non-reactive and do not leach chemicals into the soil. If you choose to use wood - USE ONLY UNTREATED WOOD. NASTY THINGS LIKE ARSENIC AND OTHER CHEMICALS LEACH INTO THE SOIL FROM ALL PRESSURE TREATED LUMBER, MAKING IT TOXIC.

2) For a senior in a wheelchair, we made an enabled bed in our garden in brick about 2' high, 3' wide and 9 foot long next to one of our back garden paths. We may build a hollow square one ( with one of the sides missing) in the future as an alternative design. Here is the website of the garden I volunteer in: http://www.clintoncommunitygarden.org

3) You'll probably be interested in these enabled gardening sites:

The Wonderful Canadian city farmer site:

http://www.cityfarmer.org/urbagnotes1.html#notes

The commercial garden forever site is a great source of tools and enabled gardening aids.

http://www.gardenforever.com/pages/artenabled.htm

Search through this site for information on enabled gardening, the Chicago Botanic garden is a pioneer

 

http://www.chicago-botanic.org/Images/explore/enable/EnableGuide.pdf

Once you're established as a garden, please consider joining the American Community Gardening Association. For 25 bucks a year you instantly become part of an international organization (we have Canadians, Japanese and a coupla European members) of community gardeners. Check out this link for all the goodies you can get as a member: http://www.communitygarden.org/about/membership.html

There are karmic benefits to joining the ACGA as well.

Happy gardening, please let us know how it works out for you,

Adam Honigman

 

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Leonard Sheard [mailto:lsheard@wi-net.com]
Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2001 5:40 PM
To: community_garden@mallorn.com
Subject: [cg] Elevate Garden Beds

I am looking for plans for elevated garden beds to be used by gardeners in wheelchairs or those that have difficulty bending down to garden at ground level.
 
Len
Iola Community Garden
Iola, WI
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