How to build a garden

The definitive guide to making a raised bed, minus actual planting instructions

I have shown so many people at work this photo. Empty-garden photos are my new baby photos. I’m very cool.

I have recently built a garden. It is one of my proudest accomplishments in literally years. (Assembling and birthing a child beats this out, but only barely.)

I want you to be able to share in this joy. So I have put together 11 simple steps for building a raised-bed garden.

Enjoy.

1. Go with wood beds, not metal.

If you live at any latitude south of I’m gonna say Duluth, you might want to use wood beds, because metal will bake in the summer sun. And come July, your carrots and the roots of your tomato plants and everything else will start cooking, and soon, baby, you got a stew going.

Which, ew.

Anyway. In a wooden bed, your plants stand a much better chance of surviving the climate-change hellscape. Hooray!

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2. No beds more than 4’ wide.

You have to be able to reach the middle, after all. I went with a 4’ x 8’ bed. The reasoning is simple: 1) boards come in 8’ lengths, so 2) this would require the least amount of cutting and also 3) this means it’s the BIGGEST BED POSSIBLE that’s still 4’ wide.

It’s rare that going big also happens to be the easiest option. I considered this a sign from God Herself: Go big (and easy) or go home. Fuck yeah.

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3. Find a plan.

Sub-steps:

1. Google “garden bed plan 4’ x 8’”

2. Check out various gorgeously wrought beds that require digging foundations or include framing and edging and some that are basically small houses

3. Get discouraged, wail at the sky, “Who am I, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT?!” (Indeed, you are not.)

4. Consider readymade kits.

5. Get angry, wail at the sky, “I am BETTER THAN THAT.” (This is yet to be seen.)

6. Find a simple-ass free plan on the Lowe’s website.

7. Scream at the sky, “GOOD ENOUGH.”

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4. Dust off your couples’ therapy skills.

Let’s say you’re an aspiring Garden Lady. How do you pick a site for your raised bed?

If you’re me, you go outside with your spouse and baby and a tape measure and point out that the front lawn is really the only place the garden will get a full day of sunlight, and over here by this shrub is a fine spot.

“That’s a lot of real estate it’ll take up,” says your spouse, who insists he is not becoming a Lawn Guy, but who does handle the lawn and has started using words like “overseeding” and “fescue” and “mow.” 

Anyway. Lawn Guys People who are concerned about lawn well-being and Garden Ladies are natural enemies. Their coexistence can only be managed via a delicate dance.

“I’m afraid it’ll be an eyesore,” he says.

“Define ‘eyesore,’” you say.

“Well, what do you want?” he says.

“I want it to get enough sun.”

“Define ‘enough sun.’”

“I’ll define your face.”

“The soil density and aeration are really fescuing my mow.”

“Define ‘mow.’”

[wrestling ensues, work gloves fly, 14-month-old squawks and claps]

This is an opportunity to call upon your couples’ therapy skills: take a deep breath and center yourself and tap into your inner wisdom that tells you how to connect with your beloved in a way that fosters healthy compromise.

If you know how to do that, please email me. My partner and I have not had the greatest couples-therapy experience.

And this gives me the opportunity to tell a story.

Before we moved in together, my spouse and I – being mid-30s people at the time, being cautious, this not being our first rodeo – sought out a couples’ therapist to make sure we had ironed out any major foreseeable problems.

This is how we met Frank, an awkward, lanky therapistman who was regularly 20+ minutes late to start our appointments.

Frank was…not on our wavelength. He rambled – one of our sessions somehow meandered into a discussion of Fellini films and Frank’s latest trip to Argentina. His office was roughly 95 degrees Fahrenheit. I was not 100 percent clear he knew what a joke was.

Spouse and I were spinning our wheels, therapeutically speaking. And so one night as we sauna-therapied in Frank’s office, we told him that we felt like we were good, we were done with therapy.

“Oh! OK. Is there anything else I can do for you?” Frank said.

Spouse and I looked at each other.

“I am also a sex therapist,” Frank said. He paused, then added, “Well, unlicensed sex therapist.”

What I THOUGHT was: “Oh. So you’re a pervert.”

What I DID was: Covered my face with my hands and did a wet, panting laugh for, I’m not joking, maybe 2 minutes while my now-spouse looked at me, mortified.

When I caught my breath and wiped my nose and eyes, I looked up at Frank and said, “I’m sorry. I….” [long, stupid pause] “I….thought of something funny?”

Frank and Spouse stared at me. 

Annnnnd scene.

Spouse is now, well, my spouse, so I can only imagine that this incident won his heart.

This story was not related to gardening, but I do believe it was worth it.

(To be 1,000% clear, my spouse is handsome and understanding and funny and has excellent taste in music and movies and he is just a peach. A very handsome peach.)

Moving on.

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5. Use cedar, not pressure-treated lumber.

First, go through this thought process:

a) Regular, untreated wood will rot…UNLESS it’s cedar. 

b) Cedar is expensive. Pressure-treated wood is cheap.

c) Pressure-treated wood isn’t safe to grow vegetables in.

d) So maybe cedar?

e) Except it’s expensive.

[repeat that process 1 billion times]

Now if you google hard enough, various internet places will inform you that you CAN just use pressure-treated lumber and then line the inside of your garden with plastic sheeting. 

But who even knows what kind of health effects those veggies will have once they suck up stray chemicals? If I’m going to vomit and cry from eating veggies, I want it to be for no other reason than that I accidentally ate raw celery.

[oooooo sick burrrrrn on raw celery]

Anyway, stick with cedar. (OK, fine, redwood is also rot-resistant but based on my research harder to find right now.)

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6. Use stainless steel screws

a) Don’t fear the hardware store.

Once I decided which wood I wanted, I put off going to Home Depot for weeks, because I feared the judgments of all the experienced homebuilders and renovators who I imagined striding purposefully through the aisles, nodding knowledgeably at nail guns and high-fiving with rough, calloused hands while they demonstrate chainsaw-carving skills.

As I understood it, getting lumber at Home Depot involved asking for assistance, and I imagined that to be its own circle of hell.

STORE GUY: So you want 2 by 4s, huh? [looks at me skeptically] What are you building, anyway?

ME: Garden bed.

STORE GUY: What kind of screws?

ME: [consults list] Uh….deck screws?

STORE GUY: Self-tapping? Galvanized? Reverse-threaded?

ME: …yes?

STORE GUY: GUYS! She fell for the ol’ reverse-threaded trick!

CHORUS OF HOME DEPOT SHOPPERS: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. This brings me to…

b) All hail Saint Sharon.

I ended up going to a local store that markets itself as a “building materials supplier” (what up, TW Perry), which seemed even MORE intimidating than Home Depot, because the parking lot was full of trucks from literal homebuilding companies.

And so I put on my most unassuming outfit and a baseball cap and tried to skitter in unnoticed, face hidden, deepest slouch possible, and maybe I could get the lay of the-

“Hi!” said a kindly woman, and aaaahhhh shit I’ve been spotted.

“Ehhhhhh…cedar?” I said, snatching some deck screws from a rack. “Deck screws?”

“Cedar, huh? Building a garden?” A nametag declared this woman to be Sharon.

“Yeah…”

“OK. You might not want these screws. These-” [she held them up] “will leave black streaks on cedar. Doesn’t hurt your plants, just looks bad.”

“Oh.”

“Follow me. Now you want torx heads instead of flat or Phillips, because-” and here I lost track of what she was saying because I was having a warm, pleasurable stroke from the dear, blissful relief of having found a welcoming presence at the hardware store.

And so Ms. Sharon showed me the screws I needed and told me which cedar was stupid-expensive and which was cheaper and told me that yes indeedy you don’t want to do that plastic-over-pressure-treated-lumber crap, that’s just asking for trouble, and your wood is out at Bay 3, just ask the guys to help you load it. Then she blew some fairy sawdust on me and proclaimed me a Pretty Pretty DIY Princess who could go forth and do no wrong.

Anyway, TW Perry, give Sharon a raise.

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7. Get a left-handed circular saw.

Put in some Airpods and crank up the Spotify Screaming Females station. Put on your ear protectors and goggles and ass-kicking boots and prepare to fuckin rock your face off because it’s power tool time. Now plug in the circular saw your spouse borrowed from one of his friends and clamp your board down and gently but firmly pull the trigger on the saw and JESUS CHRIST IS IT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT.

The dingdang thing keeps wanting to tip off the table while you’re cutting but by God you are strong and capable. Let’s cut the next board and AGH why is the saw just teetering on the board and why are things splintering everywhere what the fuck.

Now turn off your Screaming Females and take off your ass-kickin’ boots and call your dad, who is the most competent person on the planet.

(At least in my case, this is true, and I promise this is not hero-worship. I have seen my dad fix a wide variety of things, from TV antennas to corn planters to pigs, and – given a couple of 2x4s and a hammer and a Sunday afternoon – I’m confident he could assemble a working hot tub in my backyard.)

I’ll tell you how this went for me: he suggested adjusting my blade depth, which indeed helped some.

But also, this is one area where it turned out my dad didn’t have the answer, because he has never dealt with the structural inequality that left-handers face.

I stared hard at the saw. I stared hard at the board. And being the intelligent woman I am, I came to a hard conclusion:

I had been using the circular saw backwards. 

Stop laughing. 

I want to point out here: power tools are made for RIGHT-HANDED PEOPLE. This is UNFAIR and DANGEROUS and also, I think, a PRETTY GOOD DEFENSE for me to use here. Anyway, once I used the saw on the OTHER end of the board, holy shit I was a power tools god.

I am very smart. All of my fingers are still attached.

Stop laughing.

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8. Make “I successfully used a power tool” your entire personality.

The ladies in my group text can attest to this.

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9. Pilot holes pilot holes pilot holes.

The internet tells me torx screw heads are mostly strip-resistant. To this I say, BULLSHIT. COME WATCH ME STRIP THOSE HEADS. MANY TIMES.

Anyway. 

I stripped several screws before they went in all the way. And so I grabbed some pliers and drew upon my full bodily reserves and the strength of my Kurtzleben ancestors and found grip strength I did not know anyone possessed, and I twisted those everloving screws out and put new ones in, using PILOT HOLES, the concept of which should also be canonized, after Saint Sharon.

But also. This brings me to…

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10. The C-Minus Principle

For this, I first direct you to my friend Kate’s newsletter about the greatness of a C-minus.

In her words:

C- says let’s experiment and see what happens.

C- says can we play?

C- says mistakes are how we learn.

C- says you don’t need to earn your place here. you are already enough.

Which is more poetically than I would say it, but…same vibe.

One joy of trying this garden-construction thing while being a journalist is that it does not require the exactitude of journalism. I do not have to shamefacedly tell an editor – or anyone – when I put a screw in wrong and then run a correction. There are no corrections on a garden. If a screw goes in crooked, I either muscle it out with some pliers or just live with it. It’s fine. The plants won’t know the difference. BabaBOOYAH.

(Honesty time: the larger of my tattoos is a result of early-career-me getting fed up with running corrections one day and impulsively getting on a bus to a Georgetown tattoo parlor and demanding a tattoo today dammit because it is something I will NEVER BE ABLE TO CORRECT and that seems therapeutic now GIMME THE NEEDLE. I do not even always love this tattoo, but I cannot change it, and that, my friend, is oddly comforting.)

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11. Call Dad again.

When the garden is done, give Dad another call. Or a text. In my case, I sent a photo of my newly built, slightly-janky-but-not-noticeably-so-from-far-away garden bed. And he responded, “I am proud of your talent and resourcefulness.” 

I’m not crying, you’re crying.

(Proof that we all are still kids in fundamental ways.)

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LINKS! LINKS! LINKS!

An early analysis of battleground states: My colleagues Tamara Keith, Domenico Montanaro, and I talked Election Day on the NPR Politics Podcast.

What it was like covering Iowa and New Hampshire this year: This story at Harper’s is really great — it captures so well the strangeness (but, in my view, NOT futility) of covering early states this year when Trump was so far ahead. And yes, I am quoted, and so is Ms. Keith, but I swear it’s also just a great piece beyond that.

YOUR FORGOTTEN, YEARS-OLD INTERNET JOY: Let’s go with the PG version of the 300 trailer. Did you see 300? It…probably hasn’t aged well. Anyway enjoy this trailer.