How to build and plant a reclaimed brick raised bed with Springtime purples, yellows & whites

Raised bed with Marguerite trees, lavender and gold edge thyme — Raised bed with Marguerite Daisy trees, French lavender and gold edge thyme

It’s been just lovely this week to have some Easter sunshine to get bulb burying & planting kick-started. We STILL haven’t got round to renovating our ‘eventual’ house and it takes my mind off the interior by concentrating on at least some nice exterior areas to look at! All of the outside path needs replacing but there’s no point doing it ’til inside is done – Catch22 – however inspired by the beautiful show gardens at the Ideal Home Show the other week, I got a bee in my bonnet about a raised bed on the entrance path….. cue Mr M being roped in on a sunny Saturday to dig me a trench and build me a wall whilst I cleared another bit of the garden. He knows how to keep a girl happy 😉

We did a B&Q run for plants….

…and then watched closely by the gaffer:

…we got started. Do ignore that awful drainpipe, which I HATE and is going very soon! Mr M broke up the knackered path to a width of about two bricks from the wall which gave some depth to the planting. We had some reclaimed bricks saved from another job, perfect for building the new wall. I ran damp proof membrane material (the black stuff you can see on the wall) between the house external wall and the soil inside the raised bed to prevent moisture damage on the bricks from wet earth.

Here below you can see the membrane more clearly. I didn’t bother fixing it to the wall as the soil holds it in place. As I was planting lavender and thyme, both of which adore & need good drainage, I used gravel as a base under the peat free soil to stop the roots getting water-logged. I was so sick of losing thyme plants that I did this last year in one of the communal rental gardens and just sat some thyme on two inches of gravel, then soil around. It grew all through the winter & is still flourishing #toptip. Fingers crossed it works in my garden too 🙂I want purple, white and yellow flowering in the garden so opted for: