Have you ever wanted your own enclosed garden bed?!
Over time my interest in gardening has been growing year after year. Then last year I really wanted to step it up a bit. I knew if I was going to expand the amount I could plant then I would definitely need an enclosed garden bed.
Our backyard is one of my favorite parts about our home, its one of the big reasons we chose it. I remember so clearly the day we looked at this house and when we walked into the yard an entire family of dear were strolling through the back. We were sold! Now fast forward 5 years and we still love all the animal visitors we have but we knew if we were going to have a bigger garden it would have to be an enclosed bed so all our furry friends wouldn’t eat it all.
Our Enclosed Garden Bed
When we started creating our plan for the enclosed garden we based it off the idea of lots of different ones we’ve seen around but adjusted the sizing to what worked best for us. We considered a few things when planning this out.
- We wanted the depth of the beds no further than I could reach. As well as our kids.
- It needed to be high enough to keep the deer out
- The right size to fit in the location we wanted to put it
- Not too big so that it was manageable to maintain
Garden Bed Dimensions
Once upon a time a long long time ago I wanted to be an architect. We can see that I have fallen quite far from that dream haha but here is a basic outline of the dimensions we used in building our garden. I personally always find visuals helpful. We kept it square and overall pretty straight forward. You can see from the front dimensions that the beds inside the garden are 2.5′ deep and the walkway 3′ wide – they are perfect size for me and I’m able to reach everything. After using it last year it is plenty of space to fit all my veggies and I even put some sunflowers along the back.
Enclosed garden supply list
Our supply list is pretty straight forward. We ended up using pressure treated wood even though we initially intended to use cedar. They just didn’t have exactly what we wanted available in the cedar plus the pressure treated ended up being way more cost effective. We also ended having to get mostly 10′ boards because that’s all that was available. We just had to make more cuts and ended with some scrap. So that’s an option if you can’t find the exact dimensions. Feel free to adjust based on your size preference. We built this last year and spent roughly $700-800 on it in all.
- 20 – 2″ x 4″ x 8′ boards
- 20 – 2″ x 8″ x 8′ boards
- 3′ x 36′ chicken wire
- Wood Screws
- Door hardware kit
- Staple gun
- Stain
Building Process
The first thing Jesse did when assembling the bed is he built this sort of U shape for the base, he built 3 of them in total and then stacked them on top of one another to secure them together. As you can see in the pictures below there are the supports in each corner, as well as one along the back and a couple shorter ones that are just inside the bed.
There are also supports that go all around the top but there is one extra board that goes across above the door to connect the two sides. My father in law was here to help and built this beautiful door however you can change the door construction based on your preference.
Timing
The overall time it took to construct the garden bed was about 1 weekend. I believe we picked up the supplies one day earlier in the week. The only thing we waited on doing was staining. Because the wood we used was pressure treated it was still very wet (and heavy!). Do we didn’t want to stain it with that much moisture in it. We gave it about a week to dry out and then stained it which was pretty quick and easy.
This is honestly one of my favorite projects to date! We love to get outside and see what’s growing. The kids love to go get herbs and eat tomatoes. If you want to see more videos of it you can always check out my Instagram or TikTok!
