Gabion raised bed - Construction gabions raised bed, Prices, Purchase

If you have a garden and would like to eat fresh fruit and vegetables, it is a good idea to grow them yourself. Whereas in the past it was necessary to provide oneself and the family with fresh food, today gardening is a passion and for many people much more than just a hobby. If only it weren't for the beds everyone has to bend over to, whether it's harvesting strawberries, weeding weeds or planting lettuce plants. This makes gardening difficult for the back in the long run. A gabion raised bed can help here and is also in vogue.

Building raised beds with gabions

If you decide to get a gabion raised bed, you can build it yourself in a simple and inexpensive way. The side wall thickness of HS gabions is 10 cm and is usually filled with stones. You should make sure that the individual walls of the gabions are firmly and securely connected so that the gabion raised bed cannot fall apart later when the soil is filled in. There are different systems that can be used to securely fasten the individual gabions together. How much fixing is actually required depends on the height and width of the planned raised bed made of gabions. The thickness of the metal wire also depends on the size of the planned raised bed. If very strong wires are used for securing slopes in road construction, which are additionally secured with rock anchors, for a raised bed made of gabions metal grids with a lower thickness can be used. These are much easier to assemble and handle, but still extremely stable. 

Building instructions for your gabion bed

The construction of a raised bed made of stone is actually very easy: Everything you need to build a gabion raised bed yourself can be bought cheaply. The high raised beds offered by HS-Gabionen always contain all grids, spacers and spirals. In case you want to build your raised bed according to your measurements, this is no problem either: For your raised bed you can buy single gabions cheaply online.

What is needed:

• Gabions - depending on the size of the planned raised bed
• fleece - this is placed on the inside of the gabion baskets so that the soil from the raised bed cannot get between stones or broken glass
• Spacers - these are used to reinforce the gabion basket inside
• Filling material for gabions

Step by step building instructions

Building a gabion raised bed yourself - Planning

Depending on how big your garden is, how many vegetables you want to grow and how much space you need, the number and size of your gabion raised bed will depend on the planning. Maybe you don't just want to build a raised bed of gabions, but several at the same time? So that you can easily reach the entire surface of your gabion raised bed, it should not be wider than 1.50 metres: so you can easily reach the centre with your hands. You can build your gabions raised bed round, but you can also create it as a square gabion bed, just your very own personal gabion raised bed made to measure. It doesn't matter whether you choose a rectangular gabion bed or a round gabion raised bed: Before you build your own gabion raised bed, you must stake out the intended area with pegs and a string and remove about ten centimetres from the ground on this area.

Tip:
If you have voles and moles in your garden, you can easily keep them away from your gabion raised bed: After the soil has been removed, simply place a close-meshed wire mesh either under or over the floor grid supplied by HS Gabions before building up the gabions. There are even special plastic barriers to help keep the beds or lawn free of molehills. If the carrots in the gabion raised bed grow above such a grid, they can neither be nibbled on by the mole nor by the vole.

Gabions raised bed construction

Now you can assemble the gabions, which you have ordered in our online shop under gabions high raised bed. Start by assembling the inner wire baskets. These are very easy to assemble: You take two pieces that belong next to each other and fix them together.

When you have assembled the inner basket of the gabions into which the earth is to be filled later, cover these sides with a fleece. This is to prevent the earth from slipping out of the raised bed between the stones or the broken glass. First fasten the fleece to the upper edge with clothes pegs so that it holds securely until you have inserted the filling. If you have decided on a finished set, you must insert the spacers included in the delivery into the inside of the gabion basket. In this way, the inner basket becomes more stable and will later withstand the pressure better.

Now simply assemble the outer basket and connect it to the appropriate spacers on the inner basket. Here, too, the spacers ensure that the high bed of gabions remains in better shape.

Gabions raised bed filling - Filling gabion baskets with stones

Now you can fill the stones into your raised bed with gabions: Be sure to choose gabion stones that are large enough not to fall through the meshes. Whether you fill the gabions with limestone, basalt, granite or other stones depends on your personal taste. If the gabion raised bed is filled with glass chunks or broken glass, it becomes an attractive eye-catcher. Glass breakage retains its colour even in hard frost and on hot summer days. You receive broken glass not only in various shades of green and blue, but also in clear, black or amber. When filling the gabions, make sure that you fill the stones or the broken glass in such a way that as few gaps as possible remain between them.

Tip:
If you combine the broken glass with LEDs when installing it in the gabions, your raised bed will glow in the dark and set a particularly beautiful accent in the nocturnal garden.

Fill the gabion bed with compost and plant it

Now all your high raised bed of gabions needs is the inner filling. As with any other raised bed, this consists of five different layers, the filling material of which becomes increasingly finer at the top. While brushwood and coarse branches are filled into the bottom of the loft bed, compost and finely sifted soil form the top layer. If you have a compost heap in your garden and want to use the compost obtained with it for the gabion raised bed, neither meat nor fish waste should land on it. The best times to replant a gabion raised bed are spring and autumn: this is where most of the garden waste accumulates, which you can use immediately for the construction of the raised bed. By the way, it is quite normal for the contents of the raised bed to collapse within a year and then have to be replenished with fresh garden soil. Every raised bed has to be rebuilt after about five years anyway, as the nutrient content of the soil is simply exhausted by then. The individual layers from bottom to top:

• At the bottom, about 25 centimetres high, coarse branches, twigs and rootstocks are filled in, mixed with some leaves and covered with soil.
• On top of this there is a layer about 10 - 15 centimetres high made of thin branches, wood chippings and unprinted cardboard, corrugated board or cardboard.
• The subsequent layer of 10 - 15 centimetres of manure or coarse compost provides sufficient fertilisation.
• The next layer consists of a 20 cm thick mixture of coarse compost and soil.
• This also serves as fertiliser for the plants growing in the raised bed.
• Then fill the high bed of gabions with nutrient-rich soil.

Once everything is done, you can place potatoes, tomatoes, spinach, cucumbers, leeks and many other vegetables in your new high bed of gabions and look forward to harvesting plenty soon.

What is a raised bed anyway?

A raised bed is - as the name suggests - a high bed: A construction is built out of wood or stone into which earth is filled. While conventional raised beds have a wooden border that has to be renewed every year, raised beds made of gabions last forever: the wire baskets filled with stones are indestructible. If you build a gabion raised bed yourself, you will never again get painful knees or back pain from bending down while gardening. The gabions for the raised bed can be bought online at a reasonable price, as can all the other accessories you need to set up the raised bed. A raised bed made of gabions can be rectangular, square, round or spiral: So you can design your garden completely individually and let your salad, radishes, onions, courgettes and peas grow in the stone raised bed and you can do your gardening work very comfortably standing up.

What are gabions anyway?

Gabions are baskets made of a corrosion-protected metal. If they are filled with earth, pebbles or stones, they become a solid wall, which is used especially in road construction or landscaping to safely fasten slopes (For all information on building a gabion wall, please refer to our guide article Building a gabion wall). As long as the gabions are not yet filled, they are light and can be placed where they are needed without the use of machines. Depending on which material you choose to fill your gabions with, you can create very different effects in your garden. These can not only be filled with stones in different colours and shades, but also with glass fragments. Since all shapes can be formed with gabion baskets, triangular raised beds with gabions, square raised beds with gabions, round raised beds with gabions and spiral raised beds with gabions are all possible. Especially if you build your own gabions raised bed, you can become really creative in your garden design.

Filling of gabions

Normally the gabions are filled with gabion stones. There are so many different types of stone that you can use them to set individual accents in your garden. Gabions filled with broken glass for the raised bed can even be illuminated and turn into coloured islands of light at dusk. With these you can create very sophisticated accents in your garden. If you want to build your gabion raised bed particularly cheaply, you can also fill the grids of the gabions with natural materials such as field stones.

For the interior lining, coconut mats can also be laid on the inside of the individual gabion grilles instead of filter fleece: So the earth cannot fall through the coarse grid of the gabions. The coconut mats, which are suitable for the construction of a gabion high bed, have a special lamination on one side that makes them water-repellent. Although the coconut mats usually do not last longer than three to five years, after this time the soil in the raised bed should be rearranged anyway and new material introduced. This is a good opportunity to change the mats right away.

Tip:
If the mats protrude slightly, they can be beaten over the edges of the gabions and cushion them slightly.