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Len,
Jack
Hale from Knox Parks uses the plastic board and I believe others on the
listserve do as well. Hopefully, you should get an answer from them soon.
Remember, this is the height of the growing season, so an answer may take a few
days to make it's way back to you.
Best
wishes,
Adam
Honigman
Adam,
Thanks for your references. I recently found the
Chicago Botanical Garden website and am pursuing some of that resource.
The City Farmer site was a great suggestion.
Where did you obtain the plastic timbers from?
Len Sheard
----- Original Message -----
From:
A*@Bowne.com
To: l*@wi-net.com ; community_garden@mallorn.com
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 10:01
AM
Subject: RE: [cg] 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
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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