A 2-Month Project Transforms This Boring Backyard Spot into a Gardener’s Dream
Whether you’re working inside or outside, sometimes, completing one home project gives you the momentum, confidence, or DIY know-how to complete another one shortly after. DIYer Dina McMahon (@dinasdigs) says she hopes her backyard transformation “is only expanded on” in the future; she wants to add even more raised beds.
Over the span of two months, she added raised garden beds and a potting table to her yard. “I have always wanted to grow my own vegetables and flowers in my backyard, and as I was staining my new fence I imagined it and started to bring my ideas to life,” she says. “This area of our yard was unused space, so it was the perfect opportunity to build my garden.”
The potting table came first.
As mentioned, Dina started by staining the fence in a semitransparent stain that she had color matched to Benjamin Moore’s Ranchwood. Once that was done, she built a potting table against the fence.
She spent about $100 on lumber and used the same Ranchwood paint color, left over from a previous project. She built a base out of bricks to go underneath the table, and then added 2x4s (plus a little bit of extra wood from her fence) to help secure the table to the two large posts in her fence.
Dina had a bit of extra lumber once the table was built, so she built a rail with hooks, a potting tray, and a bench for weeding. “I couldn’t waste any of those cut-off ends,” Dina says on Instagram. “I hate wasting scraps.”
The upcycled edging is ingenious.
After building the table, Dina removed the grass and top 3 inches of soil, laid down landscape fabric as a weed barrier, and added pea gravel (with heavy lifting help from her husband and two sons) to create a surface for her raised beds to sit on. “The hardest part was the manual labor,” she says.
One of her proudest accomplishments in the garden is the upcycled edging. “I kept some of the old fence boards that weren’t rotten and cut them down to 8 inches and pounded them into the ground, overlapping them to create a barrier for the pea gravel and define the garden space,” she says.
New raised beds provide flowers and veggies galore.
Dina had a bit of professional help with with tapping into the McMahon’s existing irrigation system to add a separate line for the irrigation to the raised beds plus a hose bib. This cost about $500.
The hose is from Garden Glory, and the raised beds are from Sproutbox Gardens. Adding those on top of the pea gravel, adding soil inside, and then planting seeds completed the project. “I adore my new garden,” Dina says. “It’s such a productive space in our yard rather than just grass! … Nothing more gratifying than heading outside to pick veggies for dinner!”
Dina says she looks forward to expanding her garden this summer, and she even added new pavers and a greenhouse. (You can see that here!).
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