A raised garden

Most raised gardens are still really low to the ground. To find a good balance of having more garden space and also provide a mixed use space I decided we needed a bar and a raised garden. So this is a bar height raised garden bed. This project started with one plan, the top needed to be 42” tall as that seems to be the bar height standard. Other than that everything was a rough plan.

I decided for the frame I wanted to do draw-bore mortise and tenon so here is a test join of what that would look like. I don’t have a lathe or a doweler so the dowels were hand cut and shaped with a handsaw and bench mounted hand plane to round those out. This joint is insanely strong and due to the nature of the drawbore as the wood expands and contracts the joint will be pulled tighter and tighter as the draw bore tries to straighten out.

Sadly I did not take many in progress pictures for this project. The side rails that hold the boards had channels routed into this so that the boards would slightly float to allow for expansion and contraction without ripping the frame apart. The bottom was supposed to be about half as deep as it ended up due to a “rough” plan and not taking into account the extra width of the top and bottom rails. Whoops! I noticed after I had already cut all of the lower mortise holes so it was too late at that point. I guess I’ll add a lift on the inside to avoid having to fill with an excessive amount of soil. The feet were epoxied to minimize the amount of water damage through the post end-grain.

The top frame was joined with lap joints and dowelled in place to cover up and minimized the amount of end-grain exposure for the posts.

Finished with one coat of sun-frog outdoor oil.

This provides great access for planting greens and the large width top frame provides adequate surface to rest a drink or plate while enjoying the outdoors.