If you’ve been disappointed with an unruly garden or plagued by backyard pests, you should consider a raised garden. A raised garden offers protection by providing walls around your plants and soil – and it doesn’t hurt your garden aesthetic either! Read on to learn more about the benefits of a raised garden bed.

What Is a Raised Garden Bed?

Raised garden beds are box-shaped planters that are filled with rich soil. There are two different kinds of raised gardens: The first is a box-shaped frame with no bottom.This type is placed directly into a garden bed and is filled with extra soil. The second kind of raised garden is elevated on four legs with a solid bottom. You can place these on a porch or another spot outside the garden to grow plants.

What Are the Benefits of a Raised Garden Bed?

1. Better Drainage

When plants are grown in an area prone to flooding or extra moisture, sometimes garden soil can retain water for longer than is healthy. This can lead to root rot that kills your plants and shortens your growing season. An area with dry, sandy soil has the opposite effect and can dry out your plants. A raised garden bed elevates your plants and soil so moisture easily escapes into the ground below but still retains more moisture than sandy dirt. This provides an ideal level of saturation for your plants. If you choose a raised garden bed with a bottom, it will often have drainage holes to make sure water does not pool inside the box. Make sure you place it somewhere you will not mind wet spots on the ground below from the drainage holes.

2. Earlier Planting

In a raised garden, you can plant earlier in the spring than you would in a normal garden bed. Because the soil is well drained, it will dry out and warm up quickly in the spring. This creates a hospitable environment for planting earlier in the season.

3. Less Bending Over

A major benefit of a raised garden is that you don’t have to kneel in a garden and strain your back. Some raised gardens placed into garden beds are strong enough that you can sit on the sidewall as you water and tend to plants. Raised garden beds with bottoms are often tall enough that you don’t have to bend at all to water your plants.

4. Better Organization

Multiple raised gardens can help you organize your garden to look neat and tidy. Not only will your garden look nicer, but it will be easier to access all your plants for watering. You can simply walk around the outside of each raised garden so you can easily reach each plant inside. No more worrying about squishing the petunias while you tend to the tomatoes! If you live in an apartment where you share garden space with other tenants, a raised garden bed can also help you clearly delineate which crops are yours.

5. Better Protection from Garden Pests

Raised gardens can deter many unwanted pests from your precious vegetables and flowers. Slugs are less likely to crawl over the sides of your raised garden bed, and the height may deter other pests that stick to the ground. You can also easily install wire netting over your raised garden if deer or other foragers are a problem.

6. Less Weeding

Weeds tend to spread like wildfire across a garden, choking out other plants in their way. A raised garden is a great way to prevent weeds from the edge of your garden taking over the rest of the bed. If you have a bottomless raised garden, you can add a thick layer of mulch on top of the soil in the spring to suffocate any grass or weeds that might have grown underneath during the winter.

7. Better Protection from Soil Contaimination

Especially if you are living in an urban area, your soil may be contaminated with metals that can slow growth or even make your produce less safe to eat. Raised gardens allow you to pile on fresh soil to grow your plants without worrying about the contaminants lurking in the ground. If you have a raised garden with an open bottom, you can place landscaping fabric on the ground underneath the frame to further prevent the spread of soil toxins. Make sure to add compost to the raised garden, which can also help increase the health of your soil.

8. Easy Soil Maintenance

In a normal garden bed, you till soil yearly to add fertilizer and other nutrients. Regular tilling can actually disrupt soil and is not always the healthiest option for the garden bed and roots of your plants. With a raised garden, you can simply place fertilizer on top of the soil because it will stay in the box and will not be washed away by the rain.

You also avoid disturbing the soil in a raised garden because you don’t have to walk or kneel on it to water plants. Walking on soil can compact it and reduce the travel of healthy air, water, and nutrients to plants.

9. More Versatility

Not everyone has enough backyard space for a large, luxurious garden. Thanks to raised garden beds that keep the garden area contained, anyone can grow plants and vegetables in any location. If you live in the city or next to neighbors, they will appreciate the compact size and contained gardening area.