Easy and Affordable Garden Box

With gardening season fast approaching

and lots of time at home, I decided to try my hand at some gardening and building my own garden box. I live in the desert and I knew I was not about to try digging into the hard ground in my desert yard so I made a plan to take the easy route and use a garden box…but first I needed to make my own…on the cheap. I thought it best to start small and take it from there so I decided on a 2′ x 4′ garden box.

I purchased 4 – 1x6x6 cedar fence pickets from Lowe’s for $2.52 each. How’s that for cheap?

I already had some 2×2 pieces in my garage along with 1 1/2′ wood screws so I was ready to go.

Using my miter saw I cut each picket so that I had a 2 ft piece and a 4 ft piece. I also cut the 2×2 into 4 12″ pieces.

This photo shows the full picket as well as the cut pieces.

1' x 6' x 6 ft cedar picket fence cut into a 2ft and a 4ft piece. as well as a 2x2 cut into 4 12" pieces

This step may not be necessary for everyone

but I decided to drill pilot holes, using my drill press, into each end of the picket pieces. It just made it easier for me to screw the wood screws into the 2×2.

Using a drill press to make pilot holes in the fence picket pieces for the garden box.

Now it’s time to attach the pickets

to the 2×2. I attached one 4 ft piece at each end to the 2×2, and then placing the next 4 ft piece butt against the first, I attached it as well. I repeated this process for the other two 4ft pieces putting 2 screws in each piece.

Attaching the fence pickets to the 2x2 for the garden box.

I then attached the 2 ft pieces to the 2×2 corner braces

making sure they’re flush with the end. I didn’t want to waste any wood so I went ahead and used the end of the picket that has the dog eared corners. I thought it would give my garden box a bit of character but you can simply cut that off to make a straight edge if you like.

Attaching the 2ft fence picket pieces to the corner braces.

That’s it folks…

that’s how easy this garden box is to make….and you can’t beat the price. It literally cost me $10. I already had the screws and the 2×2 but had I bought all the supplies I believe it would have been no more than $25.

Cedar fence pickets attached with wood screws to a 12 ' 2x2

The beauty of a box this size

is that it’s easy to find a spot for it. It’s deep enough for deep-rooted plants but still raised a bit off the ground so you don’t have to bend over quite so far, but the big kicker for me is that I can fill it up with soil that I can easily get a shovel into. That’s a win for this desert dweller. 🙂

Completed 2' x 4' garden box

This garden box took about 5 large bags

of raised bed soil mixture to fill. I’m a bit late for the vegetable planting season here in zone 9b so I decided to just put some flowers in it for now while I work on some more boxes. My garden area still has a lot of work to do but getting the boxes built is a big accomplishment and needed to be done first so I could get them placed.

Pinterest Pin How to build a garden box easy and affordable

Have a great day friends and happy gardening!