Raised beds. Pros. Cons. Are they worth it?

If you’ve seen my garden, you know that I love raised beds. I personally keep 14 of them. We built them ourselves. They are beautiful but I will tell you… they are an investment. Whether they are worth it or not is going to be a personal decision. As a raised bed connoisseur, let me share with you the pros and cons of this gardening method.

Pros

Raised beds give you an instant garden. Growing in ground… Especially establishing a no-dig garden space… It takes quite a bit of physical labor along with several years to get your soil in a good place. With raised beds, you can put down a barrier like cardboard or landscape fabric, place the beds, fill them up and you’re ready to go. Poof. Instant garden ready to rock’n’roll. It is immediately gratifying.

You also get to control the soil you fill them with. If you’re somewhere with clay soil or not a lot of top soil, raised beds can be a great workaround. You can fill them with your dream soil. Organic. Light. Fluffy. Nutrient dense. Whatever floats your boat. That can save you years of frustration fighting against the soil you would have to work with in ground.

Speaking of controlling your soil… I face almost zero weed pressure gardening in raised beds. Adding a barrier and a foot or two of soil blocks out a whole lot of sunlight for weeds that could be lingering in your yard. I do still get a few weeds here and there but it’s very manageable. I can pick them when they are small. Because my raised bed soil is loose, I can pull the whole root system easily leaving no little pieces to cause problems later.

I personally find working with raised beds to be physically less demanding. If you are someone who has trouble squatting down, kneeling or bending over, a raised bed could be the perfect solution for you. My beds are only 1 foot tall but there’s no rule saying you can’t elevate your growing surface two or even 3 feet. Having them be at a more ergonomic height could be just what you need to make gardening a little less back breaking.

I personally love the aesthetics of raised beds as well. They can be designed and customized to maximize your space. I find it’s so easy to keep a neat and orderly garden when each plant has it’s designated box to hang out in. There is much less “losing control” of the garden than what my in-ground garden friends experience.

Cons

Let’s talk about the biggest elephant in the room when it comes to the massive, picture perfect raised bed gardens you see while you scroll through your Instagram feed… They can be very expensive. Depending on the cost of lumber, each bed can be upwards of $30 and that’s if you have the tools and the skills to build them yourself. I typically see prebuilt or metal raised bed kits starting at $75. They go up and up from there. That cost can be a barrier.

The other big part of the cost comes from filling them. That nice, instant garden with the fabulous soil… that fabulous soil comes at a financial cost. It takes way more soil than you would think to fill up a raised bed. It costs me more to fill a bed than it does to build one. You can get lucky sometimes and you’ll find somebody who just did topsoil grading that will give you some soil for free. But you won’t always be that lucky.

While they are one of the fastest ways to establish a garden, it’s a literal ton of work to change your raised bed layout once they are filled. If you jump right in and set up a garden with raised beds your very first year gardening in a new place, you may come to regret how you set them up. Redoing them is a huge undertaking.

When we first set up my garden, we put the beds barely 2-3 feet apart. That is really close. I also didn’t think much about irrigation so I don’t have a practical way to set up drip irrigation. Even watering with a hose gets to be a pain with how we oriented the beds. Had I gardened here for a few years before the buildout, I probably would have known better how to set things up.

Conclusion

So there you have it, my friends… The good. The bad. My honest, unbiased opinion… I mean as unbiased as I can be as somebody who obviously loves raised beds. For me, I think raised beds will always be my first choice for how to garden. I find ways to afford the cost. because to me, the benefits are worth the investment. What do you think about raised beds? Is this how you garden already? Or do you have more questions before making the leap?