It’s just over a year since we built the first raised bed in our front garden.

Raised Bed – November 2014

We’re very pleased with the result and have had a whole year’s benefit from having greenery in front of the house, rather than practical but sterile slabs.

The front garden faces south and there is a lot of reflected heat off the slabs and walls but the plants in the raised bed have done well. I had to water once a week in the hottest weather in late July and August and I do occasional tidying and weeding, but the bed has proved to need very little maintenance.

In spring it was relatively bare but daffodils and Primula ‘Wanda’ provided colour and were succeeded by a yellow Broom and then a mass of flowers throughout the summer. Californian Poppies (Eschscholzia californica) did very well and flowered from May to early July from an autumn sowing. In fact, they were a little too vigorous and so this autumn I’ve moved this year’s self-sown seedlings to gravelly areas near the house with little soil, where they should thrive where little else will grow.

Raised Bed – late May

By July the raised bed was filled with a mass of Lavender flowers, mixed with Mexican Fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus), which spilled over the edges of the sleepers and softened the edges of the bed.

Raised Bed – July

One surprise was that the red Pelargoniums I planted last October survived last year’s mild winter. They have flowered all summer long, beside a lovely Salvia ‘Hotlips’. Both add hot red colours to the raised bed.

In the spring we built a second raised bed in the front garden, also made out of old sleepers. It contains mostly spring flowers. A third raised bed in the back garden is made out of new oak sleepers (also from Ridgeons). We chose new sleepers because they match well to the colour of the existing slabs and we can sit on the edges of the bed as they are creosote-free.

I have planted more spring bulbs in the original raised bed – tulips, Anemone blanda and white Muscari. Even though autumn has been very mild, there will be a few months when little is in flower and it is good to be able to look forward to new flower colours and shapes in the raised bed next spring.