Raised Bed Gardens & Espaliered Fruit Trees

A video transcript featuring Ive Haugeland, Shades of Green Landscape Architecture

The clients wanted to grow their own vegetables and fruits, and on this property we decided to place them right here with the driveway because it has a lot of good sun, which is the number-one thing to grow a veggie garden. Also, it's a little tucked away, which is also good since a vegetable garden is kind of seasonal and not always that pretty.

We did these raised planters and they are about 4 by 8 feet, which is a good size because you can reach them from all sides. The raised beds are made of redwood, and then we did decomposed granite around it because it's easy to keep clean. And then around the driveway on both sides, we framed it with these espaliered fruit trees. We made these kind of fences with the stainless steel wires that the fruit trees are trained on and, over time, they're going to fill in pretty well. A couple of good things with espaliered fruit trees are they don't take up much space - just a narrow surface and you can have room for one - and, also, since you train the branches down like that, they bear fruit earlier.