Raised garden beds are one of the best things you can do in your to make your garden more productive. A raised bed will warm up quicker in the spring, compact less quickly, drain faster than ordinary soil and is typically filled with high quality soil. Our raised beds started as native soil (clay, and rocks) but over the years with the addition of amendments, have evolved into a rich loam.
WHY a BRICK Garden Bed?
The biggest problem I have had with raised bed in the past is that wood will typically rot. The high humidity and warmer climate in the Southeast are a challenge for any wood. Even landscape timbers (which you DO NOT want to use for garden vegetables) will rot after a few years. Last year we tried an experiment, which consisted of using discarded pallets (Oak) to create raised garden beds. They actually worked pretty well. But they rotted. So earlier this year I bought the materials to replace a section of low retaining wall and replace the “pallet” beds with something more durable. Below is a picture of a pressure treated landscape timber that came off of the old border. It’s only five years old and has rotted pretty badly.
Home Depot recently repriced some of their 4×8 landscaping bricks (technically pave stones, but they look, feel and taste like a brick, so I’ll call them a brick). They are now priced at 40 cents each, which makes a raised bed project reasonable. Building a garden bed with these “bricks” is still somewhat expensive compared to wood, but your raised bed will last forever, or at least until the next owner tears it down. At this price, a 4×4 bed will cost you $36 in bricks, $10.00 in construction glue, and about $5.00 for a bag of paver base for a bed with 3 courses of bricks, that sits 6 inches high. Your total would be $51.
You’re not going to save money by building a garden bed with with brick. You will however get durability and in my opinion, a more aesthetically pleasing garden than by using wood.
My beds cost a bit more to install than this. Mostly because I also replaced a rotting wood border with the bricks as well. I ended up using a total of 240 bricks. I replaced a 24 foot wood border and attached two 4.5′t by 3.5′ beds to them.
I also had to use more bricks than you normally would because my property is sloped, I mean it’s really sloped. There isn’t a flat piece of land on my entire property. The border is part of a water stop for a french drain I installed a few years ago to help keep the uphill part of my land from moving to the other side of my property.
I really wanted to add a total of four beds but I ran out of bricks. Normally I would have gone out and bought more but considering my current job situation, the rest will have to wait. With apologies in advance to any brick masons who may be reading this, here is a step by step instructions on putting in a raised garden bed made of brick.
Tools You Will Need
Bubble Level - A small six inch one will do, I have several that I used, a 6 inch, a 24 inch and a 48 inch. The different sizes come in handy depending on whether your trying to level a single brick or a series of bricks.
Straight Edge - My 48 inch level is also a straight edge, but if you don’t have a long straight edge a 2×4 that isnt warped will do the trick
4 pound Mallet - This will come in handy when your leveling out your base course of bricks. placing piece of two by four over the bricks and lightly tapping with your hammer will help get them adjusted so that they are level. If an individual brick is giving my trouble, I’ll use the bottom of the wood handle to “tap” the brick into submission. If you don’t have a mallet then a regular hammer will do as well
Wide tipped cold chisel - If you’re really good at planning your layout, you won’t have to cut any brick. If you’re like me you’ll need a cold chisel to score a line in the brick and tap along the line to break it to the size you need.
Masons Twine - You’ll need this to mark out the layout of the planter. regular string will do as well. We usually keep some masons twine around as it’s handy and relatively inexpensive.
Landscaping Spikes or Stakes - You’ll need this to mark the outline of the garden bed. I keep a bunch of 12 inch landscaping spikes around as they come in handy for a number of different yard projects.
Hand Trowel - A regular garden trowel will do. If your digging a small foundation for these bricks you don’t want to dig a very wide trough for the first course. Eight inches should be sufficient.
Tools That will Help
A string level - If your absolutely fanatical about having a perfectly plumb course of bricks then you can set up a masons string with a string level to use as a guide.
T Square - I have a large four foot one that is one of my best friends. It has been involved in almost every project I’ve taken on.
Getting most of these tools are easy, getting them inexpensively can be more of a challenge.. My favorite tools store, especially for these types of tools, is Harbor Freight Tools, Their prices are great and you can usually find an online code for free shipping!
Diagrams and Pictures for a Raised Garden Bed
I’ve included a number of diagrams and pictures for your raised garden bed project. You can click on any picture in this post and it will open up a new window with a larger version of the picture or diagram you need to look at.
Get Started on Your Raised Garden Bed
The first thing you want to do is layout the square for your raised bed. Use the dimensions of the bricks as a guide to figure out what the exact size of the square or rectangle will be. Temporarily mark the inside corners of the square with a spike or smalls stone. Hint: There’s an old trick to help you set a perfect square. If you measure diagonally from corner to corner on opposing sides, a perfect square will have the same dimensions. A diagram is worth a thousand words!
You’ll want to set two spikes on the outside of each corner. The spikes should line up with where the inside of the retaining wall will be. You’ll tie the masons twine to two of the spikes that line up with the inside of the retaining wall. You’ll want to do this for all four sides. (More apologies to brick masons, they would normally use the outside of the wall and also “plumb” the line).There’s a diagram to the right to help you visualize this.
Once you have your string set up into a perfect square you’ll need to dig a trough. The trough should be approximately three inches deep. 1.5 to 2 inches for the paver base and one inch for the first course of bricks. You don’t want the trough to be too wide. One inch of either side of the brick would be ideal. So it should be 8 inches wide.
If you’ve finished digging out the trough. you’ll need to set down a layer of paver base. I usually prefer to make my own by mixing one part portland cement to three parts of sand. For a small scale project you’ll probably be better off buying a bag of the ready mixed paver base. First, tamp down the soil in the trough. I use the flat end of the engineer hammer to do that. You ‘ll also want to tamp down the paver base once you set the bricks down. If you don’t tamp down the soil and the base you run the risk of it settling down after a rainfall and undermining your garden bed walls.
I usually put down enough base for three bricks. I’ll then lay the bricks down and level each one, front to back and side to side. You can also use a section of 2×4 to level a few bricks at a time. Lay the 2×4 over the bricks and with your engineers mallet. Lightly tap the area that is too high. Go easy! You can over-correct with one tap that is slightly too hard and have to start over again! Here’s a pattern that I recommend you use if your making a square raised garden bed. This pattern will make it easy to overlap the second layer of bricks over the first.
User your bubble level to check the level of each brick, front to front and side to side. See Pictures below:
It is critically important that the first row or “course of bricks is plumb! If they are not, the entire raised garden bed will be off kilter!
Once you have your first row set and everything is square and level you can start your second row. You want the bricks in the second row to overlap the first
row. When you glue them in, having them overlap will reinforce then entire garden bed. I’ve included yet another diagram showing how the second course should overlap the first course of bricks. I use Loctite “500″ landscaping glue. It sets up with a very strong bond. You can of course use mortar, I prefer not too for a raised bed. It complicates the project and it also takes away the benefit of good aeration and drainage through the wall. When Gluing the bricks, I put a glob on either end of the brick and set it 
in place. As an alternative, you can set globs of glue on the underlying row and place the bricks on top of them. When you set the bricks down, press down firmly so that the glue spreads out over a good contact area. The glue is also a very nice lubricant when you set the brick in place. If the first course is not level the brick will slide away. You have to keep a close eye on freshly glued bricks as they will tend to slide out of place.
Above is a picture of a corner showing properly laid bricks that are overlapping The Corners are especially important, the overlap on the corners will add structural strength and stability to the overall raised garden bed. Give the second row of bricks at least one half hour to set before adding another course of bricks. Adding another course of bricks before the glue sets risks moving the bricks underneath. You can continue adding rows of bricks until you’re satisfied with the height of the raised garden bed. I would suggest a minimum of three rows. When you have laid and glued the final row of bricks, let them set for at least twenty four hours before adding soil to the your new raised garden bed.
Here’s a picture of the finished garden beds. You’ll see that the bed on the left has a corner that is not level. That corner has a huge boulder underneath, so I went with a slightly uneven bed there. I will also be attaching a border to it sometime later. There’s no glue and just a sand base on that corner.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. Better yet, I hope it’s inspired you to put in a raised bed before you get your garden planted! Let me know what you think. I’m especially interested to see if you enjoy this type of post and whether you’d like to see more of them.
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Great advice, Jose! Will definitely keep these tips in mind if the situation arises!
Thanks Tony, I hope this post helps a lot of people looking at putting in a raised bed.
Good post Jose! We have five raised beds ourselves and they work out great. We actually used treated wood and they seem to be working out great for us. What do you do for your soil? We had our tested so they could tell us the exact mix we needed to help produce good results.
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I haven’t gone as far as getting it tested. I typically add generous amounts of compost, Lime and 10-10-10 fertilizer before planting. For the areas that have a lot of clay I’ll add gypsum which helps break the clay down. Do you use treated wood for Veggies? I would be careful with that.
Really cool idea! I should look into finding some awesome gardening tools for our website. Have you come across any interesting products that could get more men into gardening?
Russell, there are always interesting products that make gardening fun. A kubota 20hp diesel tractor can definitely make gardening lots of fun
I actually had one as I had to do a lot of erosion control work on our property. Kept it for four years and sold it for what I had paid for it. But that would be another post!
This is a great idea. It will not be this year but maybe next year when I got the chance to build a garden and I would like it to be a raised garden. I always thought to use wood. I knew over time it would need to be replaced but never took into consideration that the humidity could cause it to happen faster. I will definitely have to look into the cost of brick instead.
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Brick is a bit more expensive but it is durable and if done decently adds a lot of aesthetic value to your yard. I got tired of the wood rotting so hopefully with these beds, I won’t have to worry about it again.
Ohhh…..I’m jealous of your raised garden! I’d love to have one in the future!
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IT was a lot of work, but I’m pleased with it. Funny thing, I just commented on your Wal-Mart post while you were commenting on mine! Telepathy? By the way, your post cracked me up, Thanks!
Jose, thanks for sharing your detailed build. I was going to go with wood, but I think your right about it rotting, going to change to brick, never even thought of that! It looks great, now you will have to share what you are going to grow. You mean you didn’t want to jackhammer that big boulder out, come on!! Hope to build mine in the next week or two, depending on the rain?
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Lettuce and broccoli in one box, which when the weather warms up will be replanted with green beans. Tomatoes and Peppers in the other. A jackhammer? I’m so glad I didn’t think of that! I would have ended up tearing up half of the driveway and redoing the cement (Project creep). When I go back and connect to that section with the border I will redo that whole corner, can’t have that little bump!
Thanks for sharing this Jose. I think you will save money by using brick, if you stay in the house. I’m a big believer in spending more to save money in the long run. This is a great project that proves this concept right.
BTW, do the landscape timbers have chemicals that cause problems with veggies?
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Thanks Justin! I really like the way the brick looks as well. Eventually, I’ll add more beds and also put river gravel in the paths between them, which should look really nice. My understanding is any treated lumber should not be used for veggies or other edible plants. The chemicals can leach into the soil and subsequently into your food.
Another great post to add to my gardening education – thanks, Jose! How deep does the soil need to be in a raised bed for the plants to be able to root properly? Do you till and then create the bed and then add more soil? Or just use the added soil as the total depth after you’ve made the frame? Am I making any sense?
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Laurie, I like at least a foot of nice soil, these beds have a topsoil compost mix that I bought at a materials supply yard two years ago ($30 for a small trailer load). I like to mix in the native soil for 6 inches or so and them add the topsoil that I’ve bought. I do till all the beds every year, sometimes by hand (these beds) and with the other beds we have with a small tiller. I don’t by soil for all my beds, the other beds are all native soil with compost, lime, gypsum (for the clay) and fertilizer tilled in to them. Hope this helps!
Sweet beds. It looks like you built them into the side of a hill. Do you think erosion/rain around the sides of the beds will be an issue? I’m asking because our house is on the hillside also and I’d run into similar problems.
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Joe, I don’t think it will be a problem. The areas behind and to the left of the beds have #57 gravel laid down over a french drain I installed a few years ago. I used #67 rather than crusher run as it lets water soak through to the french drain better. My entire property is on a slope, so I have spent several years doing erosion control projects (terraces, french drains, gravel, more gravel and ground covers)and have it mostly under control.
I have been meaning to get into gardening for quite some time now. Specifically hydroponics, but keep putting it off. This is an awesome project that someone like me could easily comprehend. Thank you.
Thank and Your Welcome Marvin! Hydroponics is something I’ve always wanted to try. My stepson, who has his own commercial greenhouse has some plans on a PVC pipe hydroponic setup which I might try to do some day.
Good on you using bricks for the beds, Jose, and good visuals in the post. You are correct, they last way longer than wood or treated wood. Plus, the thermal mass of the masonry stores and releases solar heat, creating a micro-climate that should extend the fall gardening season. I’ve got wood (some pressure treated, some not) on all my raised beds, but only because I’m cheap. Keep meaning to look for stones and bricks in the used section of Craigslist, but somehow never get around to it.
As for the debate on CCA in treated wood, I don’t personally worry overmuch about it. Google “using treated wood on raised beds” and there will be some good background articles on the science of copper, chromium and arsenic leachate, its binding in clay soils and organic matter, and take-up by plants.
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I’m going to have to Google that. My biggest problem with wood is that it doesn’t last long. The term “Landscaping Timber” should be banned as it’s not rated for ground contact. four by fours are, but that can get as expensive as brick. I didn’t think about the thermal mass aspect of using brick for a raised bed. That’s another plus (I did use pavestones for the floor of a small greenhouse we have for that reason). thanks for stopping by!
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Our community garden plot uses a raised bed. It’s made with plain old wood, but holding up nicely so far. We’re looking forward to getting back in the garden in a few weeks! Starting to stock up now actually.
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I’ve never been involved in a community garden but think it’s a great idea. Especially if you are limited on space. I can see one definite advantage in pooling resources for tools and other supplies that might be needed. I’m out in the country, so if we ever did a community garden it would probably be a few acres and require a tractor
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