5 DIFFERENT TYPES OF GARDEN PLANTING BEDS

I’ve been working on digging a vegetable bed in my garden for the last couple of weeks and while digging I get to daydream about my garden when it’s finished and full of vegetables, berries, fruits, legumes etc. You name it, it’s going to grow here! However, for my measly garden, this is an ambitious task so I’ve also been thinking about how I’m going to fit all this stuff in.

This blog post will cover the types of garden planting beds that can be created to suit all circumstances and garden sizes. Let’s dive in!

1. RAISED BED

What is a raised bed?

This first type is one that we all know and love – the raised bed.  Raised beds are a structure, usually rectangular, which is filled with a mixture of compost and topsoil. Plants are planted in this structure.

Raised garden beds come in all shapes and sizes, they can be purchased or you can make them yourself. Materials they can be made out of include wood, plastic, stone, bricks, concrete blocks and metal.

Benefits of using raised beds

• You have full control over the conditions of the soil in your raised bed which means you can create it to be suitable for plants that you may not be able to grow in the rest of your garden soil
• Raised beds, if they are high enough, are excellent at keeping slugs away from your prized veggies
• They are easier to tend as you don’t have to bend down so low to work on the garden
• Because of how soft and deep high quality soil goes, you can place plants closer together

Downsides to using raised beds

• Unless you have access to free soil, they are expensive to fill
• They can be expensive to buy
• If you are making your own, sourcing materials can be costly, depending on what you’re making it out of

Plants suitable for raised beds

Raised beds are so loved because you can quite literally plant anything in them. Usually, gardeners plant edibles in raised beds such as vegetables. However, you can also plant flowers and small shrubs if you prefer. It is best to avoid planting trees in a raised bed as the tree roots may eventually break through the raised bed walls.

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2. DEEP BED

What is a deep bed?

A deep bed is a highly fertile, well-drained block of topsoil that is created by digging over at least 45cm below soil level and working in manure or compost to make a nice fluffy planting bed. The bed should not be walked on and thus should be only as big as your reach so you can work on it from the edge. The bed can be edged similarly to how a raised bed would be. The difference is that a raised bed is usually raised fairly high and filled with compost whereas the deep bed is usually just existing topsoil dug over very deeply.

This digging is much too deep for the rotavator to handle and has to be done by hand. It is therefore quite a hard physical job. If you’re interested in finding out more detail on how to actually dig a deep bed, here is how I dig mine for veggie planting.

Benefits of using deep beds

• Because of how soft and deep loose topsoil goes, you can place plants closer together
• Overtime as you re-work the deep bed and keep adding manure and compost to it, it will become incredibly fertile
• It is easy to manage and work on a deep bed as it is fairly narrow

Downsides to using deep beds

• Creating one involves a log of manual digging. This is physically hard and time consuming
• If you have a lot of space and you wanted to edge your deep beds, you would require quite a lot of materials to do so which can be expensive

Plants suitable for deep beds

Absolutely anything can be grown in a deep bed but the best use for them is to grow edibles. The deep bed takes a lot of hard work to create and there is no need for such hardcore digging if you are only planting flowers. Vegetables, however, will grow much better in a deep bed than in a traditional row gardening bed.

3. VERTICAL PLANTER

What is a vertical planter?

A vertical planter is a tall planter with sections for planting up from the bottom to the top.

These types of planters have to be designed so that the planting sections are sufficiently large for plant roots, they can drain properly, perhaps into the lower planting sections, and it is easy to move plants in and out for repotting. For this reason, it can be tricky to make your own vertical planter but it is possible if you consider all the required features when you design it.

You can buy vertical planters, however, the choice isn’t huge so if you don’t like any of the options available, you do have to make your own which is tricky. 

Benefits of using vertical planters

• They are a great way to save space
• They can be used to hide unsightly walls or fences
• They are unusual and are an attractive feature

Downsides to using vertical planters

• If you are buying one, they can be hard to find
• They can be expensive
• If you are making one, it can be tricky
• They allow for quite small spaces for planting so only certain plants can be planted in them

Plants suitable for vertical planters

Vertical planters usually have small planting areas and are thus best suited to shallow rooted plants. Edible plants such as strawberries, herbs or even small salad plants such as spinach or lettuce may be grown in them. In addition, small bedding plants such as begonias can be planted in vertical planters. 

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4. CONTAINER

What is a container?

A container is simply anything into which you can plant plants. These can be specially created planters but also items such as barrels, troughs, tyres and buckets – if it has space for soil then you can plant in it! I saw someone growing strawberries in an old wellie boot once so containers can be a way for you to get creative and re-purpose old household items instead of throwing them away.

Benefits of using containers

• They are easy to obtain as almost anything you can think of can be turned into a planter
• They allow you to control the environment of the soil precisely
• They are excellent for temporary plants – for example, if you live in rented accommodation and are not permitted to dig up the existing garden
• They can look very impressive and unusual

Downsides to using containers

• Unless you use very large containers, you are limited to the types of plants you can grow in them
• If you have loads of containers, they can become costly to fill and maintain as you will likely need to replace the compost within them every few years to keep it nutritious enough for the plants
• If you are buying containers such as specially made planters, these can be quite expensive

Plants suitable for containers

The only plants that cannot be grown in a container are very deep rooted ones such as large trees and shrubs, however, these days there are miniature varieties that can be grown in containers if the container is quite a large one.

While vegetables can be grown in containers, it may not be feasible to do so on a large scale. The best types of vegetables to plant are the types that don’t take too much space such as tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, lettuces, peas, radishes – anything that you can think of that is not going to be huge. Sweetcorn is an example of a vegetable that you would struggle to grow successfully in a container as it has very deep roots and has to be next to a lot of other sweetcorn plants to pollinate properly.

5. TRADITIONAL ‘ROWS GARDENING’

What is ‘rows gardening’?

Rows gardening is the traditional way to grow food. It involves a large chunk of land where you mark out rows of where you will be planting. You then dig in between the rows and pop this dug soil on top of your rows so that you end up with small heaps of dirt running across your land. These heaps are where you will plant your plants and you will usually walk on and water in between the heaps, in the valleys you created when you dug the soil out of there.

Benefits of gardening in rows

• Rows are great for larger spaces, where it is too costly to build raised beds or not feasible to manually dig over the space for a deep bed
• Rows allow you to organise your growing area efficiently
• Weeding in between the rows is relatively easy as you can use a hoe to do so

Downsides to gardening in rows

• Rows do not yield the same results as raised or deep beds
• Rows are not suitable for smaller spaces
• Rows can be susceptible to attacks by slugs if nothing has been added to deter them

Plants suitable for growing in rows

Anything can be grown in rows but rows are traditionally used for growing edibles. Decorative plants can be organised in a much nicer way than in rows. Out of edibles, because sweetcorn is pollinated by wind, it should not be grown in rows but instead in blocks.