Our new raised beds are finished! It’s a glorious sight for us. One week of solid, concerted effort and we have eight fully irrigated raised beds. Scott, who did the vast majority of the work, is amazing.

As I mentioned before, we lined the bottom of each with gopher wire, which makes us give a sigh of relief that at least those pesky gophers won’t be an issue any more. Another pesky pest have been the birds, so as you can see, we secured pvc pipes into each corner. Within those four pvc pipes, we inserted 36″ thinner pvc to form hoops. Over this we can either lay row cover to extend the growing season, or bird netting to keep the birds at bay.

In two beds we sunk metals posts with a section of hog wire for a permanent structure of tall things to grow.

Scott also set up each bed with irrigation. Each bed has it’s own valve that we can open or close depending on if we need water to that bed or not. We chose to keep the irrigation outside of the beds so we can easily see if there are leaks or not. After the irrigation was set up. We put a layer of landscape fabric down (we carefully spaced the beds the distance of the landscape fabric) and the whole thing got a layer of wood chips over it.

Almost as soon as we were finished, we filled them up. The first two beds are all mine, dedicated to cut flowers. Previously there was a ‘meadow’ of scabiosas in that spot. They always did beautifully, but I knew in order for this new garden to look it’s best, we needed to move them. And so I did, I transplanted 86 scabiosa plants elsewhere in the garden to make way for two more beds. Into one of my two new beds went my poppy/delphinium/snapdragon starts. Beyond and in back, Scott filled with kale, mixed greens, onions, garlic, scallions and various other seeds tucked here and there.

The entire project makes us so happy. It makes us happy because it’s change towards a more functional space that with fingers crossed, is going to work better for us. One thing I’ve learned is that the spark of change in your environment can redirect all your thinking. Changing your environment is a way of throwing off the dust and starting fresh. It’s a way to put aside old, stale thoughts and to begin with a fresh slate. And so we begin again with our gardening. Here’s to many more positive gardening posts.