Garden evolution, Part 3 - raised beds

Pretty much the day that we move in to the new house Tom climbed up into the existing raised beds on the left hand side and broke the first post. I was, if I am honest, pretty annoyed about this because I thought what a pain it would be to replace it. I didn't know at the time that this was going to be the first of many posts that would just crumble, splinter or snap in half once you started to look at it.

It became clear pretty quickly that the whole thing would have to go and it would all need to be replaced so we decided, as so many gardening books suggest to "just build some raised beds". It's a phrase used in the same tone as just going to the supermarket or just make a cup of coffee. I'd realised it wouldn't be as easy as it was made out to be, but I hadn't factored in just how exhausting it was going to be

So we had some hardwood sleepers delivered by a guy with a lorry with a crane attached to it came along and annoyed the neighbours by asking that everyone in a two mile radius moved their car. I wanted to suggest that he re-positioned his lorry but I was worried he'd drive off never to be seen again and all that wood was expensive. Once the wood was on the drive we had to pick it up and carry it into the garden. This was a whole days work. After we'd done that my arms felt like they were both six inches longer. It was then that I realised how hard this was going to be.

Day two of the build was taking up the turf and digging the holes to sink the sleepers in to. I had the physical but not technical jobs whilst Tom had the technically difficult jobs of preparing and drilling the wood. By the end of day two we'd managed to get the first layer of the biggest raised bed in place. Things had not been helped by having every possible type of weather to deal with.

By day three we had a better idea what we were doing and the middle sized and small bed went into place by mid afternoon, which was good because we were just ruined from all this very physical work. I'm not used to this sort of labour, I'm very out of practice and my body was telling me so.

We left it a while before we leveled off and dug over the soil, I tell people this was to let the wood settle and the lawn recover, but that's not true at all, I was just too tired to do any more. We're now at the exciting stage of filling it with all of our plant purchases and making it look like a garden instead of three big wooden boxes with dirt in them.