My Top 5 Raised-Bed Garden Designs

After designing hundreds of gardens for my clients, these designs are my favorites! Take one of my plans, and your space will feel like it was designed by a pro!

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Today I want to show you how to design a beautiful  raised-bed garden for yourself just like a pro   would because I’m a pro. I’ve designed hundreds  of raised bed kitchen gardens for my clients,   and I teach students all over the world  to design gardens for themselves. Today I  

Want to make the system very easy for you by  showing you my five top beautiful raised bed   garden designs. But hold on a second because Pono  really wants to be part of this video. Come here.

Okay, are you ready? Pono’s here. He wants to  be sure that he gets in on this too. So I’m   going to be pulling this information from my book  Kitchen Garden Revival. This came out in 2020. I  

Wrote this book based on all the kitchen gardens  that I designed for my clients, and I realized   after I had done, gosh, over a hundred that  there was a science to it, that it wasn’t like  

Each and every time I was was going into a new  space that I was creating a completely unique,   one-of-a-kind, never seen before garden design.  That over time, I started to see a pattern,   right? That certain spaces needed certain garden  designs, and certain designs fit best in certain  

Spaces, and so I put them into categories,  and I kind of did this without realizing it,   and then when it came time to write my book  Kitchen Garden Revival, I was like, “Oh, these are  

Categories that almost everyone can use.” And so I  laid this out in the book in chapter one, I think,   which is called Site, and it’s all about figuring  out the site for your kitchen garden. So there  

Are five designs in here, and the neat thing is  once you get these five garden designs kind of in   your brain, then every space you see could be just  that one design or could be a combination of the  

Designs together, and you’re going to start to see  now that you learn these five designs here today,   as you start to look online and follow  other gardeners and watch other gardeners,   you’ll start to see these different designs either  used individually or coupled together with each  

Other to create all kinds of unique and beautiful  garden spaces. And so if you want your garden   to look like a pro designed it, but you need to  design it, then this is the video for you. So I’m  

Going to take each one and I’m going to show you  on a piece of paper how I would make it a reality,   right? So we’re going to start with what I call  the border garden, and the border garden is simply  

That; it is a garden that is on the border of your  landscape or lawn. Now back in the day or even   now, probably most of the vegetable gardens you’ve  seen, it’s just like one box sitting in the middle  

Of the yard, you know what I’m talking about? It’s  that one awkward garden. I actually say this in my   book that we should have no more awkward gardens,  and that’s where this garden’s just like out there   in the grass all by itself with nothing around  it, and it’s just like self-conscious, you know,  

Because it doesn’t really belong to the landscape,  so I’ve been there. Have you been there? If you’ve   ever created a garden like that, that’s not how  the pros do it. You want to have a garden that  

Feels like it belongs to the space. So a border  garden is perfect for you if you’ve got a smaller   space or if you just want to start small. You  don’t want to start with a really big garden,  

Then a border garden is definitely going to  be the best option for you. A border garden   is also great if you want to have other things  in your landscape besides just a garden. You’ll  

Have to see Pono’s face though, I have to say. I  mean, is he the cutest or what? So border garden,   I’ve often used those with clients where they  want to keep their lawn for their kids to play  

In or they have a swimming pool or they want  to have outdoor seating. For any reason they   want to use their landscape for other reasons  besides the garden, then a border garden is   something you can just slide you know and put  into smaller spaces. So here in this book, I’ve  

Got one where we made an L-shaped border garden  so that they could have outdoor seating; we have   another where there’s two beds around the edge  of a patio, and then another where we put beds  

On both sides of an alley. So a border garden is  just a great way to get started in the garden or   to add more garden space to your existing gardens  that you already have. So I did a little drawing  

Here. I’m just using- I’m trying to keep it simple  for you, so I’ve just got a ruler. I’m using the   centimeter measurements and measuring out some  different spaces, so I’m going to show you what   kinds of garden spaces would work, depending  on the measurements and how much room you’re  

Working with. So for this particular one, this  is say you know somewhat of a rectangular space,   and let’s say that we have a- What do we want  to have in this space? Let’s say that we have a  

Driveway, okay? So you’ve got a driveway that’s  going down here or right through the middle of it, and there’s a driveway. Let’s say you’ve got  the a door or something like that right here,   and so the border garden is simply going to fit  right on this side of the driveway. So we’re  

Going to use the driveway as our line; you don’t  really have to add steel edging or anything like   that if you don’t want to. You can just use  the edge of the driveway, which is wonderful,  

And then you’re just going to fit the garden right  on the inside. Let’s say there’s a fence here,   so I’m just going to draw some lines to signify  the fact that there’s a fence, and then we’re  

Going to just place the border garden right  inside. Now we could make two of them; we can   make one really thin one—however we wanted to do  it. I’m going to give a 1ft walkway. Actually you   really don’t have to do that cuz you’ve got the  driveway, right? So you could actually just stand  

On the driveway to garden, but you could add  a 1 ft. little place for your feet to stand,   and then I’m going to put one bed here. Give a  little space for like a little bench or a pot  

And one bed here right. So I’ve drawn in two beds  here on the border. I’ve got a little walkway.   I can put a little pot right here, maybe like a  citrus tree or a bay laurel, something like that,  

And then I can do some panel trellises. I’m not  an artist; I’m a designer. There’s a difference,   okay? So I’m drawing some panel trellises in here,  and there we go. So I took a very plain space,   right? We have this driveway; we’re going  to have our cars coming down this driveway.  

I’m going to put these words in here driveway,  and now I took something that was very plain;   we just had driveway and grass, and now  we’ve got this nice little walkway for   you to step on and then we’ve got two border  gardens separated by a little nice pot with  

You know a big herb or a tree or something in  there and then panel trellises on either side.   And there you go. That is the border garden. So  you’ve taken a fairly unused space, something   that you don’t really enjoy. It’s just kind of  sitting there, and boom! You’ve got a designer  

Beautiful garden called the border garden. So  that, my friend, is my first favorite design.   It actually quickly became our most popular design  to sell, I think because one it’s very affordable;   two it fits in almost any space; three it is  a perfect way to get started in the garden,  

And it makes you feel like you’re starting to  garden, but you’re not like over-committing, you   know what I mean? All right, here is the second  one. This one is called the twin garden, and I  

Guess you can probably guess what I mean by this.  So it’s two beds, and they’re set up right next to   one another. These can stand alone in the yard, so  I don’t like one bed just sitting all by itself in  

The yard. That’s going to look awkward. Two beds  though together in the yard, that’s going to look   like magic. So with a twin garden, you’ve got two  beds that are literally twins; they look exactly   like each other; they’re mirrors of one another.  And when you put them together in a landscape,  

It just brings the whole thing together. So if  you follow my work at all online, you’ll find one   of the most like used designs is the twin garden:  two beds and arch trellises. It’s just so simple,  

So doable. In fact, one of my garden consultants,  when they first started working with me, I swear,   every single garden they did was a twin garden  with an arch trellis. It just became like their  

Signature thing; they just did it again and again.  So let me show you how you can put a twin garden   into your space. So generally twin gardens are  going to work best in a rectangular space. You  

Can either go long with it, where the beds go  longer, or you can let the beds be wider. I’ll   show you both options. Okay, so first would be  if you wanted to do- What I mean is the twins  

Could run long ways, right, or they can run on  the short way. So for this instance, let’s say   this is out in the middle of the yard, and we’ve  got this rectangular space, so I could do two  

Beds that are say about 4 feet wide and about 6  feet long. I’m going to give myself a pathway in between, so I’ve got a path right in the middle  I’ve got paths on either side. They should be  

Equal, and then both these beds are like 4 ft  wide and 8 ft long. Then I’m going to connect   these with two arch trellises just like like that,  so now that I’ve done that, I now have this much  

More complete vision of a garden, right? Instead  of just one bed all by itself, I’ve got this   nice entry point. You’re going to have this very  magical feeling going into the garden. You look   to both sides, you’ve got plants on both sides;  you’re going to really feel like you’re inside  

Of a garden space, which the word garden actually  means enclosure, and so when you come into a twin   garden versus just this one awkward garden all by  itself, totally different feeling. So you’ve got   all this room to walk and tend around the garden.  You’ve got these two beds that mirror one another,  

And the arch trellis to tie it together. So now  let me show you, I’m just going to extend this,   and I’m going to show you how you could do this  going the long way. So in this case if you wanted  

To run the longer part of the rectangle, then  you’re going to have a shorter path on the   outside, come to the center here. These would  probably be almost probably the same size beds,   maybe a little bit smaller pathways. You’re going  to have smaller pathways in between the beds,  

But just like that. So that way you’ve got the  long side is running this way and the short side   is running the other way, just like that. Two arch  trellises. You can add some more obelisk trellises  

Here on the end so you can do some more vertical  growing, and tada! That is the twin garden,   so that is my second favorite design to do for a  kitchen garden space. Works great for rectangular   spaces and really pulls the design together,  really is going to make your garden feel like  

It was designed by a pro because it was. Because  you’re just taking my design and making it work   for your own space. Moving on to design number  three, is the garden trrio. Can you see how we’re  

Progressing here? Like 1 2 3. Yes, I know. It’s  very complicated. So a garden trio is three beds,   just like what it sounds like, and this is going  to allow you to fit as many beds as possible  

Into a space. And I like to say you know if you’re  working with threes, then any set of three counts,   and so my Chicago garden was actually six  beds, and so I say it’s basically like you   know a trio doubled essentially. So trios work  for really long spaces, really rectangular spaces,  

Where the long side is really long, and trios  also work for circular spaces or spaces that   have somewhat of a curve to them. So I’ll show you  this cool design that I did, my favorite design,   and it was in a circular space. So I don’t  have like the perfect lineup for a circle,  

And this you would have to to build with  either steel beds or you’d have to build   it with stone. So I’ll show this one to you  next; I’ll do the easier one first. So this   is actually a square space: 22 by 22. Let  me actually do a a skinnier space. That’s  

What we need for our rectangle, so for the  rectangle, you want to have like a long space,   but this space shouldn’t be that wide for you  to do your trio, and so the trio can be you  

Know you can make it any way you want in terms  of how you divide up the beds, but one way you   could do it is to have like one bed running this  way, and then you could have another bed right

Here and then you could do a different size bed  right there in the middle, and that one in the   middle you could use you know you could have like  panel trellises down the center or you could have  

Big obelisks down the center like that. You could  still do arch trellises in between these beds, and   then you end up with this really neat design of  three gardens all together, and it makes the use,  

You know, it uses up this this rectangular space  really well. Now let me show you how I did mine   in Chicago. I had a very long space, so it ran  the whole length of the front of my house, but it  

Wasn’t very wide because my yard sloped, so it was  actually just 10 ft wide but it was 30 ft long,   so it was three times the length. So what I did  is I like on this side was my garage and my home,  

So I just ran three beds like equidistant down  the side, and honestly the way this happened is   I did three and then I was like, “Oh this is so  cool. I want to do three more.” And so this as  

A standalone you know would be a garden trio, but  then I basically just imitated it again, and this   is what I mean by taking these core designs, these  five designs, and then you can just combine them,  

You know? It’s like Lego pieces, right, so all  it takes is a few pieces and you can fit them all   together to make all kinds of wonderful things. So  that’s what you can do with this trio. I basically  

Have two trios that turned into a really fun and  famous garden. I think it’s famous. Anyway this is   that garden, and you’ll see it throughout my book  Kitchen Garden Revival. Okay, now let’s talk about  

My fancy circle that I did, and this one was done  with stone. This is in the book as well, and what   we did is just three arcs, and so you build it  kind of like this, where it’s three even pieces,  

So like that. It was crazy to measure out, but  basically you do it so that the walkways stay equal, and then each of the pieces, it almost  looks like a lifesaver like this. But this  

Was the way that we did the trio, so it was three  portions to make a circle, and then on the inside   we planted a tree right in the middle, and we did  three obelisk trellises all around the beds just  

Like that. So this is probably one of my favorite  designs I’ve gotten to do. I did this one way back   in 2016, and it turned out so magical. I love this  garden. I sent my husband a text after I made this  

Garden, and I was like, “I just made the most  beautiful thing ever,” or I think I said, “This   is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever made in my  life,” and he was like, “What about our children?”  

I was like, “Oh, never mind!” All right, so  those are the top three, the easiest ones to   do. You can do the border garden in almost any  space, twin garden works in lots of small spaces   and rectangular spaces, and then the garden trio  works when you have a really long space. So now  

We’ll move to my most standard, most loved I would  say design ever, the most featured design as well,   and that is the four-garden classic. Now why  is it called the classic? Because I don’t know,   I think that like everybody when you think of a  traditional garden, you often think of four. It’s  

Just like a standard kind of normal in vegetable  gardens. So I call it the four-garden classic. It   is classic; it’s going to feel so, just you know,  I don’t know. It’s going to feel so good when you  

Walk into your four-garden classic. They are my  favorite gardens to make. You get to grow so much   food in them, and it’s just really a fun garden  to be in. So this one is- I like to make these  

In a square space, so a square or a rectangular  space. I’ll do this one in a rectangular space,   but actually I think it’s going to be too long.  You don’t want it to be too long of a space,  

I mean you can, but you’ll end up with really long  beds. I generally like to use 4×8 beds or 4×10   beds in a four-garden classic, and every bed is  equal in size. So that’s part of the four-garden  

Classic. I’ll show you the smallest one, which is  just going to be four 4x4s, and that one is one   of the you know the simplest ones to fit into  a space. It turns out really really pretty and  

Very classic, I think very classy, and you can  grow a ton in the space. So just four 4x4s. If   you look at the space you need, it’s just like 3  ft for your pathway, eight is a 11, and then you  

Could have one on either side, so you really only  need about 13 ft on each end, so a 13×13 space,   and you could have a four-garden classic;  you can put obelisk trellises in the middle,   or you could do this with arch trellises as well.  So that’s a 4×4 four-garden classic. Now the  

4×8 is going to obviously be longer rather than  square, so you’ll have two longer beds like this,   and these I think are just prime candidates for  my arch trellises because you’ve just got so  

Much more of an entry way, right? So you could  have- My pen is dying on me. So you could have   two arch trellises at the front, two back here,  and then you can even add in- I like to add in  

Obelisk trellises on the sides; that way I get a  ton of vertical growing space. So that’s a 4×8,   and this could be running either direction, right?  So you could have this where you run the trellises   this way, or you could have this where you  run the trellises going in this direction,  

So both work. So those are my top four. I’ve got  one more to show you. This is the mother of all   garden designs, and you are going to- If you’re  like me, you’re going to want to do this one.  

This is what I call the formal potager, and I said  it’s so fancy that we had to call in the French   language to describe it. Potager is just French  for kitchen garden, and the potager uses L-shaped  

Beds, so these are going to be a little bit more  complicated to build. You can piece them together   with two beds that are smaller, but basically  you make these L-shaped beds that create these   corners of the garden, and then you build this  really cool interior, where you’re going to walk  

Inside and you’re just going to feel like you  are you’re hiding from life, literally. That’s   what I like to do. So a formal potager needs to  have at least 25 ft across and probably more, and  

I’ll show you what this looks like when you draw  it out. So I’m going to change pens, and we’re   going to go long. You usually want one side to  be longer, but it doesn’t have to be. It could be

Where both sides are equidistant, but you need  it to be long enough for you to get down the   first side, the short side, of the L, have enough  where you come in, and then you go down again,   right? So the bed can’t really be like 4  feet long; otherwise you don’t finish the  

L before you get to the other side, so this  is what it looks like in terms of drawing it out, and you just make all the L’s equidistant and  equal in size. So generally speaking, this space  

Is going to be- Usually the spaces that I build  these for, the minimum up here is something like,   so you’ve got like 8 ft here, 8 ft here, and then  3 to 5 feet here, so the minimum here is going to  

Be about 25 ft wide, and then the minimum here  usually if you’re going longer is going to be   something like 35 ft long, but you could make this  8 by 8, and then you would have you know you could  

Have a 25 by 25 space. I love branching these or  connecting these with arch trellises. You can do   it on all four entrances if you want to. Super  magical, but you could at least just put it on  

The two where you’re going to be entering. Then  you can add obelisk trellises in the corners like   this, and then you’ve got all this interior space,  so you can actually add some of our other designs,   right? You could. We have a couple of gardens  we’ve done this with, where we actually do a  

Four-garden classic inside of the formal potager.  I mean is that extra or what? I didn’t quite   center this perfectly, but you literally could do  a new design inside of here. You could do a garden  

Trio; you can do a four-garden classic; you can  do two and make a twin, or you could just have one   big bed in the middle, or you could have a seating  area. The possibilities are literally endless,  

So let me show you one other way you could do  this. All right, so let’s review while I draw   this last one out. Let’s review my five favorite  raised bed garden designs: So first is the border  

Garden. That’s going to work best for you if if  you are in a smaller space or you want to start   small or you just want to squeeze in a little  bit more garden and make the most of your space.  

That’s going to be your border garden. Next is  the twin garden; that’s going to work best if   you’re fitting that into a rectangular space, and  you don’t want to have that one awkward garden,   so you’re going to twin it up. Next is a trio.  That’s going to work great for a really long  

Space; you can fit three beds together, or if  you’re working in a space that’s more circular,   the four-garden classic is going to be perfect  for a square or rectangular space. You can make   it as long or as tight as you want it to be.  Great candidate to use those arch trellises, and  

Just a wonderful classic design. And then finally  formal potager. This is if you want to go all in:   you want your garden to be your getaway. You want  this to be the place that you just go and hide and  

Hang out and host parties and have like the time  of your life. So here’s an example. I did not draw   it perfectly, but here’s an example of a formal  potager with a garden trio right down the center.  

I just designed a garden like this actually  a few months ago. I put a panel trellis here   down the center, so we can grow both ways, and  then I did some obelisks like this, so you end  

Up when you’re walking in, you can’t see around to  the other side of the garden. It’s so fantastic,   so this is the formal potager. And then we’ve got  all the other options as well from the four-garden   classic to the garden trio, the twin garden,  and the border garden too. Five garden designs  

And then the possibilities are endless. You can  make almost any garden that you want from these   five garden designs, so take it from me. I  have put together and designed hundreds of   kitchen gardens. It matters what it looks like.  I know that we’re growing a garden to get food.  

I know that there’s so many practical reasons  to have a garden, but when it comes down to it,   if you think your garden is beautiful, you’re  going to go out there a lot more. And if you  

Design it to be beautiful from the beginning,  it’s going to be so much more beautiful in the   end. So taking some time right now to design your  garden the way you want to, to act like a pro and  

To use one or two or three of these designs inside  the garden that you’re planning is going to make   a world of difference in the garden that you get  to enjoy today and for many years to come. I think  

That’s it, so my five garden designs. Tell me in  the comments which one is your favorite, which one   are you going to try out in your own garden space?  And then you got to like come show me, okay? So  

Come tag me on TikTok or Instagram. Show me the  garden that you create this year, and we have   tons of resources to help you at gardenary.com, so  we have this calendar, cool thing. All you have to  

Do is put in two dates that you know about your  town or city, and then we are going to tell you   every other date you need to know to plant for  this year, so it’s at gardenary.com/calendar.   You can grab that resource, and then we have all  kinds of other resources, including my books,  

Kitchen Garden Revival. This is how to  make a garden. Leaves, Roots and Fruit,   this is what to plant in the garden. Plus we have  upcoming live workshops that you can check out at   gardenary.com. My name is Nicole Burke, and I am  in love with the garden and I truly believe that  

The garden is for everybody. There’s a garden  that is made for you, and hopefully today you   got one step closer to designing one that you  love so so much you literally cannot handle   not being in the garden. I’m about to go out to  mine, I think. All right, thanks for watching.  

I will see you next time, and yeah, send me your  garden design. I can’t wait to see what you make!