Permaculture, Homesteading, and Community Building // How to Make a Garden Bed on a Slope

Hi everyone! Today I want to share how I turned a sloped part of my backyard into a beautiful garden bed. I had the help of wonderful friends who showed up at my house with a desire to play in the soil.

First, my friends Matt and Adam planted two fig trees. They added two comfrey plants at the base of each fig tree. Comfrey has taproots that are 10-15 feet long and can break up compacted and clay soil (what we have) and bring nutrients in the subsoil up to the roots of the fig trees.

Kamille brought some of the extra soil over to low spots in the slope in order to even out the bed.

Next, we began to create the garden bed border. A bay tree had fallen last year, so we took the twigs from that tree and collected as many straight ones that we could find. They needed to be about pencil width and at least 3 feet long. I then cut some rebar and hammered the rebar pieces into the ground, surrounding the border of the soon to be garden bed. I spaced them about 8 inches apart.

We then started to weave the twigs into the rebar, as shown in the picture below:

It took a while to get the twigs all weaved together and cut off the parts that were sticking out, but it was fun and like a puzzle! I topped off the twigs with a straight and strong dried piece of bamboo in order to stabilize the top.

Then, we added 5 layers of newspaper to the whole bed. We did this in order to kill any weeds that were already growing in the bed. We watered the newspaper in. Soon, the newspaper will degrade and become part of the soil.

We added 3 inches of compost on top of the newspaper. The compost that we added was fairly old compost, which was perfect for the job. If the compost was too young, it could still be hot and end up burning the roots of the plants we would soon be adding.

We watered the bed, and then started to add our seedlings! I chose perennials for this garden bed. This is because the bed is on a slope and hard to access. Therefore, I wanted a low maintenance bed that I could plant in once and it would continue to take care of itself for years to come. I ended up planting mountain mint, peppermint, and spearmint. I planted red dock along the border, as it is a very ornamental perennial. I added scarlet runner beans to the back edge, so that the beans could run up the wooden fence. Scarlet runner beans are one of the few beans that are actually perennials, and they produce beautiful scarlet flowers. I also added a few borage plants to the side. These are self-seeding annuals, meaning they will die within the season, but will drop so many seeds that baby borage plants will pop right up and take their place. And viola! We have a beautiful garden bed!