header image

Building a Garden

How can I grow a productive garden in a small urban garden space?

Building a garden in a confined space?  There are many ways that you can maximize your garden's yield with a little planning and foresight.

  •  Maximize garden space by creatively using different heights and shapes of raised beds, trellises, and vertical planters. Look for possible hard surfaces such as balconies, patios, or sunny windows where you can place planters with bottoms.
  • Choose plants that have small footprints and slender profiles like lettuce, carrots, onions, and garlic.
  •  When considering sprawling crops like tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash, reserve space only for your favorites.  Train them to grow along a fence or over trellises.
  •  Choose varieties with upright, compact, and bush habits to get greater plant density in small planters.
  •  Plant crops such as leaf lettuce, chives, and basil that provide "cut and come again" harvesting instead of just a one-time harvest.
  •  Look for varieties that are prolific producers such as tomatillos, indeterminate tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, zucchini, and green beans.
  •  Plant crop combinations in layers so that all space and light availability is used efficiently by plants.
  • Create a layered garden. Plant a climbing vine, a medium-sized bushy plant, a smaller shade tolerant crop, a ground cover, and a root crop all together in the same bed for a miniature “food forest.”

Need help?

Send us a personal message using our contact form.

send a message

Comments & Feedback – Thank You

These people make a great product. Their raised beds are ridiculously easy to assemble and install. The finished bed looks like I paid a professional to install it. The bed is perfectly straight and level and all the seams are tight. Like the previous reviewer stated, moving the boxes into the back yard and unpacking them was more of a chore than putting the bed together. I would guess it took me about 20 minutes to build a 2’ x 16’ x 11” bed. I was able to fill it and plant it that same day, and FedEx delivered it around 3pm. If you need a raised bed, I would definitely recommend this to you and know that you would be very happy that I did.

– Michael A., Georgetown, TX

I recently purchased a raised cedar bed from Naturalyards and I am delighted with my purchase. The bed required assembly, but no tools were needed. I put together a 4x6 foot 16.5 inch deep bed in about 10 minutes. It took me longer to get the pieces out of the boxes than it did to assemble them. Things I particularly like about this vendor are: 1) that they have different grades of wood; 2) that the price includes shipping; 3) the speed with which the bed was delivered; and 4) the very nice people that I dealt with when ordering. I highly recommend this vendor.

– Brian N., Chevy Chase, MD

I put together the bed this past week with my 10-year-old son.  It was so simple, I pretty much told him what to do and he did it on his own.  Our neighbor came by last night and she LOVES it!  She didn't believe me when I told her it took longer to till up the ground under it than it did to put it together.  We've put in the dirt and the veggies, and I just can't wait to see how we do this year.  This saved me so much time and effort!  Thank you for this wonderful product!!!  I'll be sure to pass on the website address to anyone who asks!

– Sue M., Shrewsbury, PA