Y’all may remember my post last year all about how we created a non toxic raised garden bed. But unfortunately, we never got around to planting anything in it during growing season. So this year I was determined to do so! And I figured I would share all about what to plant in a raised garden bed too.
That way, if you’re looking for some ideas, I have you covered! Now, you could either do vegetables or flowers. And I debated a long time about which one I should do. But ultimately, I decided to do a flower bed instead.
I shared in my that post I mentioned above that I was inspired by Charleston’s window boxes. We even cut down the legs of the bed to make it even with the windowsill. And this raised bed is sitting right in front of my office window.
So I wanted to look out my window and see a beautiful box of flowers and leafy greens! But that’s the great thing about garden beds, you can customize them to exactly how you want them!
And it’s a good option especially if you have a small space to work with and can’t do a full on garden. Which I would love to do eventually one day! But, come along with me as I plant and prepare this beautiful flower garden instead!
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Preparing The Raised Bed
Before you do any planting, you need to get the bed ready first. Now, since this raised bed is pretty big, with it having 8.4 cubic square feet of space, we decided to fill it with more than just garden soil. I will link the exact garden bed we have below too:
You can also use a soil calculator to determine just how much soil you may need for your bed too. You need to take into account the soil depth and what the best soil would be for the type of plants and/or flowers you want to plant.
And be sure your bed has a good drainage system before filling it up with soil. Our soil compaction consisted of mulch wood chips as the bottom layer.
Then, we placed pea sized rock gravel on top of that. And as the final layer, we placed some loose soil on top.
Figuring Out What To Plant
I mentioned this above, but it’s important to determine whether you want a vegetable garden or a flower garden in your beds. Ultimately, I would love to do a vegetable garden too.
But, where this raised bed is, I didn’t think vegetables would thrive there. I know tomato plants get pretty tall, and since this is right in front of my office window, I figured that would block my view.
And this raised bed garden is mostly in the shade. So I knew that I could really only plant root vegetables, bush beans, pole beans, and salad greens like Swiss chard that thrive in shady environments.
If you remember I attempted to do some strawberry plants in some raised beds last year too. But, they didn’t turn out too great because all the deer around here enjoyed them as a tasty snack!
Maybe one of these days I will do a veggie garden too. It’s my dream to bring in a bountiful harvest to enjoy that I grew with my own hands!
At least I still get to do that with my herb plants though! So now that I knew I wanted to create some beautiful flower beds, I set off to our local nursery to find the best flowers!
I knew I wanted a mixture of taller plants and smaller ones, as well as some kind of plant that would drape down the side of the raised bed.
So basically I got a few annual flowers of different varieties to give it some color and dimension. When it came to planting them all, I wanted to make sure there was enough space for everything that I got.
And I wanted to make sure I made good choices when it came to picking out the flowers. I wanted everything to look good together as well be healthy plants under the same growing conditions.
So I looked for specific plants and flowers that thrive under mostly shady and partial sun conditions.
Flowers I Planted
Now, here is a list of everything I got and planted in my garden bed:
- Waxleaf Begonia
- Sunpatients
- Orange Marmalade Crossandra
- White Queen Caladium
- Gartenmeister Upright Fuchsia
- Creeping Mazus
- Tradescantia Zebrina
I got two of each plant since my bed has two sides and I wanted them to be symmetrical. Before planting everything, I laid the plants out on top pf the soil until I got the arrangement I wanted.
I think that’s the best way to determine how you want to plant everything. Once I was satisfied with it, I began to plant them.
Enjoy Your Raised Garden Bed
I’m so happy with how this small raised bed turned out. Especially since it is my first ever flower bed. I can’t wait to see how the plants and flowers fill in and how they start to grow.
I’m hoping to have a thriving garden very soon! And I hope this gave you some great garden bed ideas. As you can see you can do so much more than in-ground gardens.
The good news is that there are so many different options and beds to choose from. Do you have a raised garden bed too?! If so, let me know below what you like to plant in it too!
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