Allotment Wooden Raised Beds
Allotment Wooden Raised Beds are a great introduction to raised bed gardening, giving you a cost effective way to grow your own fruit and veg in your garden or plot. The raised beds are made using longer-lasting thick Scandinavian wooden planks, slow-grown timber for greater strength which is planed all round and comes pre-drilled for easy assembly.
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Allotment Wooden Raised Beds are a great introduction to raised bed gardening, giving you a cost effective way to grow your own fruit and veg in your garden or plot. The raised beds are made using longer-lasting thick Scandinavian wooden planks, slow-grown timber for greater strength which is planed all round and comes pre-drilled for easy assembly.
Made from premium quality slow-grown dense timber containing a greater proportion of the hardier late growth than faster-grown timber. Not to be confused with the less dense wooden planks supplied in many cheaper raised bed kits avaialble. This slow grown timber has a much tighter grain (as shown below) which gives the planks greater strength.
Our Allotment Raised Grow Beds are available in a range of sizes and depths to suit your outside space. The beds are perfect for vegetable growing, but also make stylish planters for flowers or specimen trees.
Please note: timber is a natural product and susceptible to shrinkage/swelling, all sizes are nominal +/- 5mm. Sizes apply to external dimensions.
- Supplied with pre-drilled planks, internal wooden corner fixing posts and galvanised screws
- Optional capping (2cm/0.75" H x 5.5cm/2" W) gives the top of beds an elegant finish
- Made from quality 20mm/0.75" thick straight cut Scandinavian softwood timber planks from sustainably managed forests
- Planks are planed all round
- 2 year structural guarantee
- Allotment Wooden Raised Beds available in 3 heights (from 15cm/6" to 45cm/18") and 10 length/width options.
- Simple to assemble - full instructions provided
- High pressure treated with a non-toxic preservative which is plant and human safe, complies with all EU standards and does not contain CCA (Chromated Copper Arsenate)
- There are also various Wooden Raised Bed Protection Covers available to protect your crops.
- Raised Bed Liners available separately - ideal when beds are on hard surface.
- We strongly recommend the use of an electric screwdriver for assembly
- Find out more about the Benefits of Growing in Raised Beds
NB. Main image shows allotment raised beds with capping.
Product Reviews
Trying growing my own vegetables for the first time this year and these seem like a great solution. Easy to put together.
We got these at the beginning of lockdown as we decided to grow our own vegetables. I purchased two of them, one for brassicas and one for carrots, beets, lettuce, etc. The first set that arrived were broken, so a bit of back and forth followed, and that was sorted, but I must admit I wasn't overly impressed with them. The same wood at the local builders' merchants would have been a fraction of the price (even explicitly treated for garden growing use), and I could have had them cut to the exact lengths required. Anyhow, due to it being lockdown, as you will guess, everything was getting bought up, so we made do and got them filled with decent topsoil. By year three, we started to see the odd bit of slitting in the wood, and by last season, they were not in great shape. This year, they are totally gone. As soon as we tried to compact the soil with a wooden board to prepare the brassica bed, the end of one of the raised beds just fell off. The main issue is that, rather than provide metal corner brackets; you get wooden battens cut down. The ends of those battens are not treated, so the exposed end grain sucks up moisture almost immediately, speeding up rot. Worse still, the battens are not anchored into the ground in any way. That means the sides are not properly bracing each other, as they would if the battens had stakes or proper support. The whole thing loses structural integrity far too quickly. The two-year structure guarantee now looks suspiciously deliberate it is basically an admission of how long these are expected to last, which is just ridiculous. I honestly would save your money and use a local timber yard instead. I cant comment on the other raised beds Harrod sells. They do have more expensive ones with longer three-year guarantees, but based on this experience, I'd steer clear of the budget version. It looks good in the catalogue but isn't built to hold up. The photos attached show the state they are now in.
Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback and for providing such a detailed account of your experience with our raised beds.
We’re very sorry to hear that the beds haven’t met your expectations and that they’ve deteriorated to such an extent. This is certainly disappointing to hear, especially when we understand the time and effort that goes into growing your own vegetables, and how frustrating it must be when the structure doesn’t hold up as intended.
We fully appreciate your concerns about the longer-term durability. As outlined at the point of purchase, these particular beds are covered by a two-year structural guarantee, however, we understand your frustration that they didn’t last longer, and we do take comments like yours seriously as we continuously review the materials and design of our products.
You’ve raised some good points around the design and treatment of the battens, and we’ll be passing this feedback on to our product development team for further review. We do offer other raised bed options with longer guarantees and different construction methods, but we realise this doesn’t help with your current situation.
Thank you again for your comments and for bringing this to our attention - we’re genuinely sorry that your experience with this product has been disappointing.
We purchased two 1.8m-1.2m-0.45m wooden allotment planters, although unfortunately these are not designed to take the weight of soil required to fill them. Upon filling each planter, the middle planks on all sides instantly started to significantly bow, requiring us to make further expense for additional timber to reinforce the sides. The drilled holes unfortunately were also insufficient for the screws so we had to redrill them all. For the high price we paid, unfortunately we are quite disappointed.
Allotment Raised Beds - Planning and Planting Information
To help you price up and make the most of your raised beds - and most importantly enjoy growing in them - we've compiled a list of factors to consider when choosing, siting and filling your beds.
For starters, raised beds can be placed directly onto soil, lawn or paving and can be filled directly - but not exclusively, see below - with a fertile, organic rich, light & friable topsoil/compost such as the vegetable and fruit topsoil that we supply via our partnership with Rolawn.
Calculating the quantity of soil you will require to fill your beds is relatively simple; you just need to multiply the length of your bed by the width and the depth in metres, multiply by 1000 and the figure you arrive at is the amount of compost you'll need in litres. All the Rolawn soil we supply is delivered in 500 litre tote bags so you can tell immediately how many bags you'll need to order using the calculation below.
2.4m long x 1.2m wide x 15cm deep = (2.4 x 1.2 x 0.15) x 1000 = 432 litres - 1 x 500 litre tote bag required
For the best growing results, we'd advise you to fill your beds with 75% topsoil and use a bulky organic matter - such as farmyard manure or home-made compost - to make up the other 25%. For more details on filling your raised bed, please contact our Customer Services Team.
One of the benefits of a raised bed is the fact you can tailor the growing medium to the plants you are wishing to grow. For example you can use ericaceous compost for acid loving plants or you may want to grow carrots in sand.
If you want to improve the drainage of your bed you can add a layer of gravel approximately 5cm / 2” deep at the base, but note that the level of drainage will be dictated mainly by the ground that the bed is sitting on. If for example the bed is sitting on a free draining sandy soil you may want to lay down a semi-permeable ground sheet beneath the bed to reduce the drainage. We'd also advise you to use one of our specially designed Raised Bed Liners when positioning your bed on a patio, concrete or other hardstanding area. Not only will these thick, one piece, non-woven polypropylene fabric liners protect the timber frame of the bed even further but they will cut down on the leaching of sand and other fine soil particles - and they make emptying a bed much easier at the end of the season too!
We've also produced a quick guide to the depth of bed you'll need to grow favourite Kitchen Garden crops. This list is by no means definitive but if you're unsure of how many tiers to go for, the over-riding advice is to go deeper - this gives you the flexibility to grow a wider variation of vegetables in the future and also helps with crop rotation.
Here's that list;
|
Vegetable Type |
Depth of Bed Required |
Number of Tiers |
|
Carrots |
30/40cm |
2 Tier at least |
|
Potatoes |
30/40cm |
2 Tier at least |
|
Parsnips |
30/40cm |
2 Tier at least |
|
Beans |
15/20cm |
1 Tier at least |
|
Peas |
15/20cm |
1 Tier at least |
|
Courgettes |
15/20cm |
1 Tier at least |
|
Beetroot |
30/40cm |
2 Tier at least |
If you’d like further information on our Wooden Raised Beds, or would like to discuss any feature of this product, please call our Customer Services Department on 0333 400 6400 or e-mail us at enquiries@harrod.uk.com – we’d be delighted to help!
What The Press Say
Grow Your Own2019-07-26
Subscribers Offer
The 1.2m x 1.2m bed is perfect for smaller gardens and allotments
Kitchen Garden2013-10-08
Garden Store - Our roundup of the latest products and services for Kitchen Gardeners
Growing crops in raised beds is very popular and can help to contain the growing area and divide the plot up, making maintenance easier. Some gardeners make their own raised beds from recycled materials but if you are not a lover of DIY then the next best thing is to buy good value kits. The Allotment Raised Beds from Harrod Horticultural are good for those on a tight budget. The bed kits are made from 20mm thick FSC pressure treated timber planks that have been pre-drilled. They come with internal wooden corner fixing posts and galvanised screws. Optional capping is available to give them a more elegant finish.
