When we first moved in, the garden of Chez Snail was far from interesting: a lawn, a patio, a rotary dryer and larch-lap fencing. That was it – no flowers, no shrubs, no vegetables, nothing. So, we set about changing things. The fencing went the first night… at least one of the panels did, as it blew down in high winds! We soon discovered the lack of soil, and embarked on a scheme to rectify this.

We didn’t have much compost at the time, so we started by using log rolls to create some slightly raised beds in which to grow vegetables. We hoped slowly to improve the clayey subsoil that was our growing medium. Sadly, this just didn’t do the trick – productivity wasn’t good, we were creating little compost and the garden was so wet that the logs rotted. Round about this time we planted a willow hedge along the back of the garden and we knew that this would generate some compostable biomass.

Beds made from reclaimed railway sleepers

And so we decided that some more robust and deeper raised beds were required. After careful consideration, we decided to use old railway sleepers. We knew that these would not rot plus we were keen to be reusing a resource rather than sourcing from new. In many way these have been a great success. I think they have been in place for about 10 years now. We bought in some topsoil to get the beds started, but then we upped our game with composting – collecting leaves and moss from friends, getting our neighbours to give us their grass clippings, using shredded willow (it now grows about 10 feet/3m every year) and making use of cardboard, paper, kitchen scraps and dog poo – and the fertility of these beds has remained high. On the down side, old railway sleepers do ooze tar in the sunshine. They are a real challenge to install because they are very heavy, unwieldy and tough to cut. Looking back, I’m glad that we used them and I think the beds we made with them have many years of life left.

Next we moved on to an area of garden where we wanted to grow soft fruit. Despite the success of the railway sleepers, we decided to try using a different material for this large square bed and opted for planks made of recycled plastic. The facts that these are relatively light, do not rot and (according to the manufacturers) can be worked with using standard woodworking tools were all factors that made them appealing. As it turned out, the first two points were correct, but the last one was simply not true. Mr Snail (you may be aware how much he loves DIY) really struggled to work with the plastic… which (unsurprisingly, on reflection) did not behave like wood at all and was a pain to drill and saw. In addition, it is very bendy and so the edges of our beds have bowed out as a result of the weight of the enclosed soil (even though it’s only about 12 inches/30cm deep).

Those are link-a-boards that Aliss (rip) is perched on

The third area of the garden that needed dealing with was the chicken’s patch. Poor things had sloshed about in mud in the winter and experienced ground like concrete in the summer, so we decided that they needed a bed of wood chip, which they could churn up and fertilize and slowly convert into soil. In this case, with a light substrate, we decided to try using link-a-boards – these are made from recycled plastic, come in 1m lengths and fit together with plastic pegs. They are about 6inches/15cm in height and can be placed on on top of one another to make deeper beds. These were a joy to use – they were light, portable and slotted together easily. They don’t rot and have been perfect for enclosing woodchip. We used two on top of each other for a depth of 12inches/30cm.

Up-ended flags enclosed this bed

As we wanted more growing space, we started eying up the patio. In this case the materials to construct the bed were right there in front of us – the paving slabs. Mr Snail levered them up (they weren’t very well fixed) and used them to define a progressively larger and larger bed, which eventually became J-shaped. This was what we called our ‘rubbish bed’ because all the materials were reused. It contained no ‘soil’ just compost made from garden waste, paper, cardboard , old potting compost etc. As a site for squashes, this bed was unsurpassed!

Slabs back as a patio

But life moves on, and the limery plans meant that the rubbish bed had to go. We saved all the compost – some of it was incorporated into the railway sleeper beds and some is in storage in rubble sacks. The paving slabs, now in their third incarnation, are back being used as a patio and the compost is destined for the new block-built deep bed. After all the problems we have had with flooding and our experience of all these other building materials, we concluded that blocks were the only viable option for the new deep bed. It’s going to be filled with home-made compost, with wood, cardboard, paper and moss in the bottom and we’re hoping for some good root crops – carrots and parsnips in particular.

Obviously, different materials have different qualities and you have to choose the right one for the job, but I must say that the plastic wood is my least favourite and not something we will be rushing to use again.

-oOo-

This post was inspired by a conversation on Facebook with Ann L. and Sarah H.