Owen Chubb Garden Landscapers Limited is an award winning garden landscaping company in Dublin, Ireland. This is our blog where we share our ideas, day-to-day experiences and inspiration. More about us...

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Small Garden Design Ideas – Raised Beds

Posted on June 2nd, 2010

RAISED BEDS featuring pressure treated PINE SLEEPERS

Raised Bed with sweeping curve layout

An important challenge in designing and building Small Gardens is to utilise the available space to provide practical and visual interest. Raised Beds which can be be constructed in a range of materials and in different sizes and formats are a very useful design idea or feature for the small garden. Not only do they provide easy access and easier maintenance of plants but can be a feature within the garden area. In this example we have used pressure treated Pine Sleepers to construct the Raised Bed and another interesting aspect of this example is the layout, ie a combination of gentle arc and linear layouts reflecting the sweeping curves of the lawn areas.

Another aspect is the inclusion of herbaceous planting at ground level in front of the Sleepers to provide a two tier arrangement to the planted are. The photos show the excellent Scabiosa columabria ‘Pink Mist’, which reaches 25-45cm (Raised Planter Bed is 45cm) and produces beautiful pink flowers from June – September each year. Some spacing between the Scabiosa was left for additional planting of Spring bulbs. 

Raised beds are an easily accessible and eyecatching idea for inclusion in small garden areas with sweeping curves offering additional interest in contrast to the more usual linear layouts.

Raised Bed with foreground planting at ground level

RAISED BEDS add a new level and focus to the garden