Whenever we decide to start gardening we come up against challenges, usually brought about by peoples understanding of the way things should be.  For example, the neighbours might get annoyed by the untidy look of a permaculture garden, or perhaps insted of understanding a particular garden nitch and growing something to suit the conditions, we decide to change the site to grow what we want.

The raised garden bed is something that is often used in both of these situations, to "tidy up" or make a site appear more ordered and to change the growing conditions by increasing drainage.

Dan Hatfield, who runs Healthy Harvest Kitchen Gardens (Faulconbridge, NSW, Australia), has decided to take this approach in his own back garden. To share the experience of building raised garden beds out of recycled corrugated roof sheeting and hardwood, a workshop was run at his place to give people the experience and practical know how to do it for themselves.

Pete and Dave putting in the posts.

The workshop was a success with a 6x1.5 meter double reach bed being built with a great team effort by the participants who all learned a lot. The new bed is now the third bed of the same size that is going to be used in a rotation using chickens for their ability to fertilise and till the soil, saving a large amount of work.

Marking out the corrugated sheeting for the sides.

The last post going in.

Attaching the corrugated sheets. Chicken tractor and poly tunnel in the background.

Dan fixing down the cappings.

The finished bed waiting to be filled with any garden wastes that Dan can get his hands on before bringing the chooks in.