Raised beds do not need to be boxed up in wood. There are much more fruitful designs for your garden. Well placed and designed garden beds can accent the topography of your landscape while passively harvesting water and nutrients, reducing your efforts for a verdant garden.
Contour gardens harvest rainwater from your landscape.
Raised beds shaped on contour, also known as swales, sculpt your landscape in beautiful patterns that clearly define path and bed. Clearly defined raised beds and pathways help avoid soil compaction, allowing the soil to act as a living sponge and loose medium for plant roots. Starting your garden out with raised beds goes a far way to assure your planting success.
Kitchen Garden on Contour
Meg & Al, Westminster, MD
Contour gardens harvest rainwater from your landscape.
A rain barrel is a drop in the bucket compared to what the soil can hold. Keep your garden and yard verdant and lush without ever picking up the hose!
Swales can be planted with vegetables, fruits, flowers, fodder, wildlife species, grasses or a mix of all.
Swales can be thought of as productive rain gardens.
Edible Woodland Garden at Volt. Rain Garden in front & Raised beds on Contour
Terraces
Terraces and tiered landscaping gardens add instant architecture and growing space to otherwise uneventful and unproductive slopes. Like raised garden beds on contour terraces passively harvest rain water while stabilizing slopes and show casing gardens in unique and creative ways. Well designed into the landscape they blend with your home or businesses architectural style.
Ecologia works with hand selected materials to build terraces that blend into the surrounding topography, terrain, and existing landscaping
Terraces can create several mini-gardens in your backyard. On steep slopes, terracing can make planting a garden possible. Terraces prevent erosion by shortening the long slope into a series of shorter, more level steps. This allows heavy rains to soak into the soil rather than run off and cause erosion.
Terraces present wonderful possibilities in the garden. They are outdoor living rooms during good weather and form a transition from the outdoors to the indoors throughout the year
Dry Stack Stone Terraces ready to Plant
