Over the years I’ve done several vegetable garden layouts for my garden. I’ve always tried to make improvements to the vegetable garden. My goal is to make it more efficient for growing yet still aesthetically pleasing and fun to be in. This year however isn’t just an adjustment, it’s a whole new garden! We moved into our new house in November of 2023. Last year was our first season gardening on the new property and unfortunately I didn’t have much time to get the garden started. I was busy trying to get our old house ready to sell and it took a lot of my time. Due to this I really consider 2024 to be a lost year, at least for gardening.
This year I’ve put together a new vegetable garden layout and I can’t wait to get everything started. The new layout uses raised beds, incorporates a fence around the garden, a good walkway system, and a spot for a future greenhouse. You can see the layout below. Most of the raised beds are going to be 8ft long with some width variations in 3ft and 4ft beds. A 3ft wide walkway is around the perimeter and between the beds except for the main walkway. Down the middle and from the middle to the sides is a 6ft wide walkway with an arbor centered in the garden. I thought it would neat for a structure in the center of the garden to grow vining plants or maybe put a chair or bench there.
New Vegetable Garden Layout Using Raised Beds
The front of the garden is all vegetable garden area. To the right and just outside the garden is a perennial planting bed. We have plenty of stone on our side to make a nice retaining wall around the bed. To the left of the garden I’m planning on a greenhouse. It will probably be a 12×16 ft greenhouse but I’ve considered a 10ftx20ft greenhouse. I think the 12×16 will allow for more movement inside the greenhouse and should be plenty of space for my uses. My old greenhouse was a small Harbor Freight 6ft x 8ft starter greenhouse that actually did quite well. I found that it wasn’t as large as I would like it to be and that MUST be corrected!
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The back of the garden is where I’ll have a small shrub orchard. I’ve already planted blueberries that we transferred from our old house and added a thornless blackberry and a fig shrub. The two square raised beds in this area were planted with garlic in the fall. We should have a pretty good garden harvest this summer even though a neighbor’s dog dug into the bed a couple times. That brings me to the next thought: a garden fence!
The Garden Fence
We have deer, rabbits, bobcats, voles, raccoons, possums, armadillo, and all sorts of wildlife here. A good fence should keep most of them out but I’m mostly concerned about the deer. We see deer often and it’s not just one random deer passing through. There are usually 3 or more. Sometimes we’ve seen 6 or 8 at a time. I’m also concerned with the voles but a fence probably won’t be tight enough to stop them. I’ll have to find another solution for dealing with voles. Perhaps the bobcats and owls can help with that?
We’ll see. They are welcome to as many free vole meals as they desire!
The fence will have posts set at a 6ft spacing and will have a nice entry arbor. Very similar to the arbor I built in 2009 for a Better Homes and Gardens project.
I’m planning on making concrete footers that will hold a bracket to attach 4×4 posts to. Burying posts into the ground is one possible way to do it but my previous garden fence experienced carpenter bee borings that would have required replacing the posts. At least this way I can unscrew the posts and replace them with new posts easier than having to dig up and concrete in a new post. I’m trying to learn from my past problems!
My working design right now is in this picture. I’ll put some sort of mesh between the posts and frame it with lumber. The greenhouse will be entered from the outside of the fence but will have a back door than will be inside the fence (see the layout picture above). This should enable an efficient transfer of plants to the garden from the greenhouse and easy access to the greenhouse itself. As always plans are subject to change but I feel pretty good about this design.
That’s where I’m at today on the plan. I’ve already started getting the post holes dug to set the footers. The ground was nice and soft after rains and I just was curious how easy it would be to dig the holes. Plus we had a nice warm day that I could not resist getting outside to work! I’ve also put together several wooden raised beds that were leftover from framing materials. You can check those beds out below:
I’ll post more as I get this garden started. If you would like to follow along check out my YouTube channel and subscribe here for updates on Growing The Home Garden!
A Formal Vegetable Garden Layout
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A New Vegetable Garden Layout
Over the years I’ve done several vegetable garden layouts for my garden. I’ve always tried to make improvements to the vegetable garden. My goal is to make it more efficient for growing yet still aesthetically pleasing and fun to be in. This year however isn’t…
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