We’ve been doing a lot of sprucing up in our yard in the past few weeks. Angela has wanted a raised garden bed for a long time and Bob of I Like to Make Stuff has a really great, simple design which he recently built that I liked a lot. I will confess that I might have bought a kit if one had been available. The price of the materials ended up being about the same and it was a fun project.

The materials for this were four 8′ decking boards, a 4′ section of 2“x2” aluminum angle, and some decking screws (which I already had). I cut the decking boards into 4′ lengths, two for each side.

Aluminum is soft enough to cut with most woodworking blades, so I cut the angle into four 1′ lengths1. I then used the bandsaw to cut 1–1/2″ angles to one end of each length. These will act as spikes to hold the bed in place. I used a simpler cut than Bob’s, figuring it would still stick in the ground well enough. I also used the bandsaw and disk sander to round off the corners. I left an inch gap at the top, as well so that the corners wouldn’t scrape any knees or shins.

I worked out a screw pattern to attach the corners to the boards. The decking boards had a couple of thinner channels on the underside, so I tried to put the screws into the “meatier” sections. The corners are overlap joints, so the screw pattern isn’t symmetric on either side of the corner. Once I worked out the pattern and “dry” fit a corner section, I used the drill press to drill a set of holes. I messed up a couple of hole locations but another dry fit had the pattern finalized. I drilled and countersunk 32 holes into the aluminum.

Then it was time for assembly, which meant pre-drilling all those holes into the decking. I probably didn’t have to pre-drill them, but as the holes were very close to the board ends, I wanted to make sure they didn’t tear out.

Angela helped me carry the assembly into the garden where it was time to load up with soil and plants. Ainsley helped her plant some vegetables. Some of these were seeds, so it looks more empty than it is.

- Bob’s design has longer corner pieces, but he also apparently had more aluminum on hand than I could get. These aluminum pieces aren’t especially cheap, either. [↩]