Josh got tired of my “Pinterest fail” raised bed garden… He has to look at it everyday as comes and goes to work. He finally couldn’t stand the flopping down hot mess any more.

Enter Desert Garden 2.0…

Suddenly there are plans drawn to scale, mock-ups of new beds and the sound of power tools cutting metal (not a nice sound). This is what happens when you get an actual contractor involve. I am so thrilled to have a rabbit-proof garden that I will put up with just about anything right now. After planting in my original raised bed, the rabbits and chipmunks helped themselves to a lovely buffet salad bar. Not anymore! (Evil laugh)

Josh built triangular raised beds out of scrap dunnage wood that he had saved up as scraps from jobs. I lined the beds with weed cloth around the inside, leaving the bottom open. We filled the beds with a mix of composted manure, alfalfa and sand from our farm.

I invested in some netting to protect young plants from birds and my dogs until I got the front gate up.

Josh even poured an elevated concrete landing inside the garden gate to keep critters from being able to dig under the gate!

Lastly, we lined the back and side wall of the garden with vinyl covered cable to support the grape and berry bushes that I have growing along the walls.

Our next step is going to be building a pergola-style, open roof over the entire garden to support shade cloth over it through the summer months.