New Raised Beds in Abbey Gardens!

If you’ve been keeping an eye open in Abbey Gardens, you may have noticed some new raised beds! Made specially with pre-loved wood from Robert Longstaff, these raised beds will be home to a ‘Square Foot Gardening‘ vegetable patch.

Square Foot Gardening is a method of creating small, orderly and highly productive kitchen gardens. It was created by Mel Batholemew, gardener, engineer and efficiency expert in the United States, as a better way to grow a vegetable garden. It became a huge hit in his 1981 book Square Food Gardening.

The basic idea: Create a small garden bed and divide it into a grid of squares, each then managed individually. Seeds or seedlings of different kinds of vegetables are planted in one or more square, taking into plant size. With no paths, there is no wasted space, and the soil in the bed stays loose because it never gets stepped on. For more info, this video gives a great overview.