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I am really excited about everything outdoors this year! We have some super big plans and I am looking forward to enjoying these spaces. The first thing we tackled this year is some minor landscaping for Josephine. I really love how cute she is looking. I wonder what changes or additions we will see next with her! 

The next big thing on the list were garden boxes. I have wanted elevated raised garden beds for along time and we finally were able to make it happen. I’m going to walk you through how we made them (aka how hubby made them). It’s a fairly simple process that definitely goes by fast the more you build. 

First you want to determine the size of the garden box. We built boxes in three different sizes (so far… I think I want a few more but we will work on that later). We have 4 ft x 8 ft, 2 ft x 8 ft, and 2 ft x 2 ft boxes and this method worked great for all of them. 

Materials:

2 x 4 lumber of your choice (we have built them pressure treated lumber and cedar lumber)… for a 4 ft x 8 ft box you will need approximately 9 pieces

3 inch exterior screws

Corrugated metal (roofing)

Metal flashing 

Metal to wood screws

Tools: 

Miter Saw

Cut off tool 

Impact Drill

We used our miter saw to cut the 2 x 4s into 8 feet long pieces. We then cut each end at a 45 degree angle with the 2 x 4s standing up on the short side. We made sure to cut them on the same side so that they form a nice box. We repeated this for all four pieces and then connected everything using the 3 inch exterior screws. Once we had the one frame built, we repeated those same steps to build an additional frame. We made sure that the two frames were even and were good to go to the next step.

After our frames were built we cut the metal to size. Using a cut off tool, we took the metal flashing and cut them into four equal pieces. You can do this based on how tall you want your boxes to be. We decided to make our boxes about 2 ft tall. Once that was done, we took the corrugated metal and cut it down according to the height of our box. We actually cut it a little under 2 feet to make sure it fit within the frames and did not go over. 

Next we took one of the frames and placed it flat on the ground. We took the metal flashing and placed it in the corner of the frame and attached it to the wood using the metal to wood screws. We placed a few in each corner. This was done for all four corners. 

Once we had all of the metal flashing attached to the first frame, we placed the other frame down on the ground and gradually lowered the first frame with the flashing on top of it. The metal flashing will essentially held the top frame up and allowed us to screw the metal flashing into the corners of the frame on the bottom. 

After all of the corners of the frames were secured to the metal flashing, we flipped the box onto its’ side. Then it was time to add the corrugated metal which will essentially become the walls of the garden box. We used the metal to wood screws to attach the metal to the wood on both frames. We made sure to overlap the corrugated metal slightly to ensure no soil slips out once it is upright and full of goodness. We continued to rotate the box until all of the corrugated metal was attached. Please use gloves when working with the metal… we learned the hard way that you can easily be cut by this stuff. 

The final step was to add trim pieces to the top. The trim pieces basically make sure that the metal is tucked away so that the rugged edges do not harm anything or anyone. For this, we took the rest of the 2 x 4s and cut two 4 ft pieces for the ends and two pieces at 89 inches long for the long sides. We attached them to the top of the box and that’s it! 

If you would like a video tutorial of the process, check out the following youtube video! While you are there, subscribe to our channel!