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Gardens at ground level may seem to be the natural order of things. But they pose real challenges to those whose knees don’t bend quite as well as they did twenty years ago or whose backs have become less supple as time flits by. There is no need for advancing years to deny a favourite activity to senior citizens. Raised garden beds are one answer to the challenge of continuing to garden as we grow, gracefully no doubt, older.


One advantage of a raised bed in garden landscaping ideas is that, depending on what it is to contain, it can be placed on any surface. You can put such a bed on bare soil, on a grassed surface, or even straight on top of a concrete pad without any preparation.
Raised planting beds need something to contain them. Many materials are well suited to the task of containing your planting medium: the choice depends partly on just how high you want to elevate the surface of the bed, and that depends on your circumstances.
 

If the objective is to raise the surface so that it is half-way to the knee (a little stooping is okay) we are looking at a retaining wall of eight to twelve inches. For such a wall you can use wooden planks laid horizontally; or brick; or concrete block. If the objective is to raise the top of the bed to knee height, around 20 inches (give or take for individual stature), the same materials can be used but you need a higher level of skill to fix the wooden planks together or to lay the bricks. In the case of waist-high beds, professional landscaping contractors help or a high skill level with masonry is required: there are considerable forces being exerted on the walls, especially when the planting medium is moist.

In designing your raised bed bear in mind that you need to allow for drainage, particularly if the bed has been placed on top of an impermeable surface. In a bed raised only to mid-calf level on top of a soil base, natural drainage should be sufficient. For beds above this level, drainage holes should be incorporated in the structure. Do not forget the need to provide some form of channel to direct excess water away if your bed is built on top of concrete.
 
Another important design element is dictated by how far the gardener can reach. There are few things more frustrating than having the center of a garden just out of reach. Place the bed, if possible, so that it can be accessed from all sides you can then effectively double its width. It is also a good idea to provide the top of the retaining wall with a reasonably generous lip: this makes a good spot to place tools, spectacles and coffee mugs without fear of losing them in the growth.


It has been argued that the higher a raised bed, the uglier it is. That argument takes little account of the beauty and the productivity of a whole range of weeping, rambling, running or creeping landscaping plants. There are many plants that, established near the edge of a raised garden bed, will happily colonise the landscaping outside of a retaining wall and turn it into an enchanted embankment. Examples of food-bearing plants that can be used this way are strawberries (runners or stolons). Among decorative plants that can be used to disguise retaining walls are some members of the saxifrage family (stolons). Another edible plant useful for this situation is prostrate rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis ‘Prostratus’); and creeping raspberry, aka orangeberry, (Rubus pentalobus) is frost tolerant and is reported to be widely used in the Seattle area.

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