Raised Bed Planter From Old Picket Fence Panels

A few years ago my parents took down an old fence, and knowing my project hoarding tendencies they gifted them to me for something creative.

One of the things we were in need of this year was a raised planter bed for a small square foot garden so I got to work.

Depending on how much you choose to reuse, I've found the easiest way for me to disassemble the panels was with a crow bar, hammer and good old muscle. Grab a pair of gloves and get to work!

Once I had everything broken down, I used the the back horizontal support pieces and some scrap 4 x 4 to build the the basic framework. The horizontal pieces were screwed into the 4 x 4 using my Kreg Jig and pocket hole joinery.

I used a piece of scrap wood as a spacer along the top to keep everything the same height around the box.

I knew I wanted to bury my 4 x 4 posts in the ground, so I left this spacing at the bottom.

Once the basic framework was laid out, I cut down all of my fence pickets to the same height using a miter saw.

You can make a quick work of this by setting up a stop to cut them all at the same length.

Using my Ryboi cordless nail gun, I nailed the pickets to the backside of the framework.

I covered the entire length.

When it was done, this was the view from the front facing side. I love the patina of the old wood!

I repeated the process for all 4 sides. My longer sides were 8 feet and my shorter sides were 4 feet.

Once all the sides were completed I joined the 4 corners together.

You can see here that some of the old nails were left in the wood. I just hammered them down for safety since they will be buried under soil eventually.

You can see one of our chickens checking out the final product. Our leghorns are the most curious of our hens!

We dug four holes even spaced to place the 4 x 4 corner posts, and backfilled well with dirt.

And there you have it! A MASSIVE 4 x 8 garden bed completely free thanks to some leftover picket fence panels.

And again, more curious chickens.

This wood also makes gorgeous smaller planter boxes. If you check out this post, you can see an image of a DIY deck I made out of the rest of the panels for my daughter's playhouse!