Raised garden beds offer several practical benefits, including the ability to more easily control soil composition and easier access to your plants. But raised beds can be as stylish as they are functional. The only real rule in gardening with raised beds is to use your imagination to create raised beds that complement your landscape. You can buy raised bed kits ready for easy assembly or build DIY raised beds that cost little money.

The above example of a raised bed potager, or kitchen garden, showcases the orderly, formal design these beds can bring to a setting. Simple wood frames constructed from rot-resistant lumber provide years of growing success. Raised beds lend themselves to intensive gardening techniques, such as interplanting, succession planting and square-foot gardening. Continue to see more raised garden bed ideas.

The beauty of a raised bed is how it can work as a design element in the garden. Garden designer P. Allen Smith incorporated formal raised vegetable beds into the landscape at his Garden Home in Little Rock, Arkansas.

There are a variety of materials that can be used to build a raised garden bed, such as woven wicker, giving a rustic English garden appearance.

An informal stone raised bed design features individual boulders stacked and fitted to create a foundation for productive gardens. This mounded garden illustrates a type of raised bed known as hugelkultur (German for “hill culture”). Plants in hugelkultur raised beds reach mature size more quickly than in traditional planting beds and need very little watering.