I usually spend a lot of time planning and determining the shape of my gardens. It usually starts with a sketch on a piece of paper and after thinking about it for awhile, maybe even weeks, I’ll start to lay it out in real life. I’ve had a general plan for this garden for over two years, you need a plan before you start. Then you need to really visualize it – what do I have that’s long and flexible and works as a good visual representative? Well a hose of course. Yes, I usually layout all my plans with my trusty garden hose. If a hose isn’t your thing, try a little spray paint.

Once I finalize my layout and plans for the garden, the next step is to dig out the border. To do this I highly recommend investing about $15 into a manual lawn edger or even better, and ice scraper. I find that using tools like this allows for precision edges and nice even 90º trenches. I will leave my hose in place while I do this, moving it to the side as I cut out a border with my ice scraper.

This is the not so fun part, the part that everyone tries to avoid. Let me tell you though, if you want to have a garden that produces healthy plants, you’ll want to take the time to remove the grass, weeds and roots from the garden bed. To do this I like to use a spade or shovel. Dig shallowly into the grass loosening the roots from the soil. Pick up the grass piece and shake excess dirt from the roots. Discard the grass. Continue to do this making sure to remove of any debris, roots and rocks that you don’t want in your garden bed.

Great, you made it through the hardest part. You know have a nice clean bed of soil! Good for you. If you’re planning on adding plants to your new bed I would recommend amending the soil with compost or manure to give your new plants nutrients. If your soil is clay-like consider adding some peat moss to help with drainage. Combine the new soil with the old using a shovel to rotate it. Turning it over and mixing it in multiple times. If you have a large area that you are transforming consider renting a rototiller for this job. Lastly, you’ll want to grade the soil. For this garden I mounded my soil slightly in the center and then graded it downwards towards the trenched edges.

This is where your garden will really start to take shape. I was working with a beer budget so I went ahead and used plastic tube edging for my garden. I like using black tube edging because it looks decent, it’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but it’s standard and works, it keeps the mulch in when it rains, and it makes mowing easy. Black tube edging is inexpensive, about $16 for 20 feet and installs very easily. If I ever choose to upgrade my edging down the road it’s easy to remove and replace as well.

To install it use your lawn edger or ice scraper to clean out the trenches, making sure to level the sides of the garden creating a 90º or “V” angle to the lawn. Unroll the edging and install in short sections (apprx 12″). Hold the edging in place while backfilling with dirt or topsoil. The soil will hold the edging in place. The edging comes with stakes, but I never use them – a proper backfill always seems to do the job. Continue down the edge of your garden adding edging and backfilling while you go. When you reach the end use a hacksaw or garden shears to cut the edging to the desired length.

Typically I don’t use weed barriers, I find that weeds are something that just go with the territory. If you are a dedicated weeder the less weeds you will have overtime, especially if you remove weeds from your beds before they go to seed. I am always reorganizing and fine tuning my gardens, with a weed barrier I’d have to cut through it every time I rearranged my garden. It’s more of a hassle than it’s worth, plus the results aren’t guaranteed.

However, for this garden I knew that I wasn’t going to be planting anything alongside the edges of my raised beds. I was only going to be mulching so I decided to try something new, newspaper. There was grass growing around each raised bed, and instead of digging it out, I turned it over with my shovel and then covered it with thick layers of newspaper. A few of you recommend this approach to me when I was planning my garden, so I decided to give it a whirl. I wetted down stacks of newspaper with my garden hose and then laid them around my raised beds. I kept the sections thick using at least 10 layers per section. After I laid out the paper I used my ice scraper to carefully tuck the paper into the edges of the raised beds and the plastic edging.

Assuming you’ve gone ahead and planted your garden, you’ll want to cover your weed barrier and protect your new plants with a good hefty layer of mulch. I covered mine with my old fav, Scott’s black mulch.