Adding an Arbor in a Raised Bed Garden Area
Do you ever walk past some thing in your backyard (or in your house) about 50 times and every time you realize whatever it is bothers you, and you need to do something about it? And you want to do something about it but just don’t have the energy? That’s hat’s how I felt all last summer every time I walked by my little garden that area. There’s one little section that jetted out awkwardly from the walk, and I knew I wanted to turn that into an extended planting area and I just didn’t seem to have desire to dig another spot in my yard up ha ha believe it or not. I finally decided this spring I was going to tackle it, and add an arbor in a raised bed garden area. I don’t know why I procrastinated for so long, because now it looks great and it only took me about 45 minutes worth of work, with about $12 worth of mulch. There’s a video of the entire project start to finish below with some better angles of the project.
Even though I loved these fun handmade structures I had put together with fallen maple branches from the trees in our yard, they were looking a little tired this year. See how the area I circled is kind of awkward to the side of our path? It was begging me to be a bigger planting area for years.
You are probably wondering why I would move an arbor to right next to our raised bed garden…Well, our 20 something-year-old deck has finally reached it’s limit. We decided we’re going to replace it with a stone patio, and while we’re waiting for all the permits to come back I have started removing plants from around the edge of the deck in preparation, and I needed to remove our little arbor and trellises from where our secret garden path is since it will change the configuration of the back a little bit.
While I am going to miss our fun secret garden path, I am excited for the change. I might still keep it but use plants to define it instead of the arbor and trellis.
I needed a place to put the arbor and we really didn’t seem to have a good spot. Nick suggested I place it near the garden. Last year I saw on an Instagram page called Gardenaryco that they trained tomatoes to climb all the way up and around their trellis and arbors. I thought that would be such a fun way to try to grow them so I decided to give it a shot in my own garden. That prompted me to finally dig out that extra little patch of grass, add mulch, and place the arbor right at the head of our raised bed garden. Since it’s an eastern exposure it won’t block the majority of the light during the day so my sun-loving garden plants can still get plenty of vitamin D.
In the newly expanded area, I used a natural cypress mulch to keep the weeds down and help keep the moisture in the ground. Now that it’s completed I’m so glad I did it! It looks amazing, and it was such an easy thing to do. Plus all of that digging was a great work out after a year of sitting on my bottom.
Right now I’ve added a little seating area for decoration, but I’m actually thinking I’m going to move my stock tank planter to that spot. It’s a little bit shady from the River Birch much of the day, and that will be perfect for growing more cool weather veggies like lettuce and spinach.
What do you think about adding an arbor in a raised bed garden area? I’ll revisit this with you later this summer to let you know how progress is, and how my tomato growing up an arbor experiment is, and if it worked or not!
