DIY Raised Garden Bed For Under $200: What You Need
Steve, Maple, and I currently live in a townhome. It fits our needs in most ways—enough bedrooms and bathrooms, enough storage, big windows, etc. Eventually I would love a house with some land so we have enough space for a garden, but for now, we do not have a yard space to call our own. However, we do have a patio. The patio is decently sized and at this point we really haven’t used it. So as Spring arrived, I began planning a small, raised garden space.
Originally I had envisioned a larger box, one that hugged two of the walls on the patio, but we quickly realized that when it came down to cost, that design was going to be out of our budget. Aside from the soil and seeds, I really wanted to keep the design under $200. We ended up going with a single box that stretches one entire wall perfectly, and I’m honestly so excited about it!
The design is simple and it took Steve only a couple hours to put the whole thing together. We bought all of our supplies (aside from the tools which Steve already had) at Home Depot, which made it easy to have a one-stop-shop.
What You’ll Need To Build A DIY Raised Garden Bed:
Our dimensions are 8’ long x 2’ wide x 2’ high. This made it easy because it mean Steve didn’t need to do anything to the 8’ boards on the long side, other than screw them into place and we only needed one 8’ board to do all 4 side pieces. But feel free to adjust this shopping list to your own personal needs.
Three 7/8”x2”x8’ Cedar Boards
Two 2”x4”x8’ Pine Boards (we went with pine here because it was cheaper, but you could do Cedar. This made 6 legs)
One 1lb box of 2” Outdoor Screws
One roll of 4’x25’ Chicken Wire
One roll of 4’x50’ Garden Bed Fabric (linked but size is different)
I’ve linked each item, above, but please note that the boards are really best shopped for in store. The website doesn’t have the exact products we used, when it came to the lumber. Plus, shopping in store allows you to pick out the perfect boards that are straight and to your liking!
Because we used cedar boards, we decided to leave the wood untreated, which is completely optional. We were really going for simple. The pine legs may not hold up as well, but they can easily be replaced if needed.
Check out the video below to watch Steve build the raised garden bed from start to finish.