How to Build Raised Garden Beds From Used Privacy Fence

6 Materials
$40
2 Hours
Easy

When building our preschool garden we had to get creative when collecting materials because our budget was super small. We had a lot of privacy fencing donated and used it to build raised beds that are still holding up after 7 years of use.

To make garden beds out of old privacy fence, first you need to decide how wide you want your beds. We were planning on having all of our beds up against fencing, so we chose to make them 2 feet wide so we and the kids could reach the back side.


Measure all the fence planks and cut the cross braces at the same width. We recommend making the beds no more than 4 feet wide. We made these 2 feet wide because we planned to place them up against a fence and wanted to be able to reach to the back side.


You'll need two long sides and two short sides. Ours were 6 feet by 1 1/2 feet and 2 feet by 1 1/2 feet.

We cut all of ours and laid them out in kits for an assembly line. We made 8 6 foot beds and had enough scraps leftover to make 4 2 x 2 foot beds.

Cut 4 x 4 posts in the same height as the panels you cut. We cut ours 1 1/2 foot tall.


Then use outdoor wood screws to screw the side panels onto the corner posts securing them well.

Once you have the corner posts installed, screw the side panels onto the end panels. Now you have a box.


The 2 x 4 braces you see in this bed are the original fence braces, we left them intact.


We did not build a bottom for our beds, we simply covered the ground with landscape fabric and placed the beds on top.

The next step is to fill the beds with dirt. We got a garden mix of topsoil, compost, and peat. We had it dumped by the truck load.


In our preschool garden we used a grant to purchase the soil mix and some cedar planks for more raised bed building.


The chain link fencing, posts, gates and everything else including the privacy fence panels were donated by generous individuals in our community.

If you are interested in building a community garden on a budget like ours, or for more details on how we built the privacy fence beds or the cedar plank beds, check out the blog post listed below. There is information on building a small pergola from scrap lumber, how to raise funds for the garden and much more.


We have very little skill and no building experience before this projects. It's super easy and they have already lasted 7 years with more life left in them.


There are also videos on how to build raised beds available here.

Suggested materials:
  • Drill   (Amazon)
  • Saw   (Amazon)
  • Screws   (Hughes Lumber)
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Little Sprouts Learning
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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