DIY Miniature "Raised Beds" for Your Balcony or Patio

miniature raised bed herb garden
miniature raised bed herb garden

SO this is top secret information, BUT, it looks like we’ll be buying our first home very very very soon. We’ve fallen in love with the place and everything is lined up and now we just need to close the sale, which is scheduled for… very soon! I don’t want to share much more until it happens and is official, but yes we’re super pumped.

The home we’re looking at has a nice little backyard space and we’re definitely thinking we’ll be doing a raised bed vegetable garden. We love the look of them, and we love the idea of being able to do some backyard farm to table action. Pulling fresh zucchini and tomatoes and eggplants right off the vine for dinner? Dear god yes please, that will mentally teleport me to Tuscany. But we’re not moving in quite yet, so let’s slow down a bit.

As kind of our last hurrah as renters, we thought we’d take this future garden project of ours and make it renter friendly for us to enjoy over the next few weeks and for you to enjoy if you’re also a renter and/or have limited outdoor space. We know a lot of folks loved our balcony makeover and it seems like there are a lot of fellow small outdoor space friends out there, so maybe you’ll find use for this DIY, too.

It’s incredibly simple. Like, stupid simple. Almost not-worth-making-a-whole-blog-post-about simple, but, well, here we are. And yes you could just buy rectangular planters, but we wanted to make something that recreated the raised bed look with the wood panels and farmhouse feel so we thought we’d give it a go on our own, and this method makes each planter box come out to just about $6 a piece.

Everything you need is listed below along with a step-by-step for you!

miniature raised bed herb garden
miniature raised bed herb garden
miniature raised bed herb garden
miniature raised bed herb garden

NEED

Wooden crates (ours are from Michaels)—for a full DIY experience you could probably construct these yourself pretty easily.

Burlap

Scissors

Hot glue gun

Soil

Plants (we used basil, parsley, and cherry tomatoes)

METHOD

  1. Measure out burlap and cut it so that it will line the inside of the crate.

  2. Hot glue the burlap to the inside of the crate—you can do a little dab of hot glue every few inches along the edge, or you can do it along the entire border of the crate.

  3. Cut off any excess.

  4. Fill with soil and plants!

miniature raised bed herb garden
miniature raised bed herb garden
miniature raised bed herb garden