It’s rather easy to go down to the home improvement store and find any one of a dozen kits to build a raised garden bed. Most will be made of pine or some kind of plastic polymer. Perhaps you’re even the kind of handyman who buys his own stock of wood and builds raised beds to your own design.
Wood, by its own natural design, is meant to decompose. After a few seasons of facing the elements pine starts to rot, and redwood and cedars start to look faded. The daily watering of your vegetable garden means that the wood will inevitably come in contact with moisture. However, adding any kind of sealant or paint the wood in a raised garden bed increases the number of chemicals you expose your garden to.
Building a bed with plastic also increases the chance of polycarbons leaching into your soil (and your dinner!)
What about building a raised garden bed from brick? Designed to be everything from impermeable walls to the foundations of grand buildings, bricks are already created to withstand heat, rain, cold and bugs. The sediment that most bricks are made of can actually be beneficial to your garden’s soil and over time bricks won’t fade, crumble, or give way to the elements.
In the long run, bricks can be a cost effective alternative to building wooden garden beds. Since dumping bricks can get expensive, you’re likely to find secondhand bricks leftover from a remodeling job (or possibly your own brick repair job!) that can have a second, sustainable life in your garden.
If you’re careful enough about your brick selection, the new barriers of your garden can also match the brick of your house, walkway or patio. Cinder blocks, if you’re able to find them cheap enough, are already designed to provide natural barriers for plants that might need to have their roots isolated. Brick planters can also be built upwards to provide an array of creative, space saving planting strategies for your garden.
Call us today at (303) 875-6111 to see how we can help you keep your historic home looking and feeling beautiful from the inside out!