Designing Your Garden: Traditional, Raised Bed, Container, and Vertical Options

You know what’s going to happen in this chapter. You figured out where your garden goes. Now you need to figure out what kind of garden it actually is. And there are more options than you might think.

Kim Pezza breaks down four main garden types in Chapter 3 of Backyard Farming: Growing Vegetables and Herbs. Each one has tradeoffs, and the right choice depends on your space, budget, and how much effort you want to put in.

Traditional Garden

This is what most people picture when they think “garden.” You till up a section of ground, make rows, plant stuff. Done.

It’s the cheapest option by far. You’re working with the soil that’s already there. Pezza recommends using garden cloth between your rows to keep weeds under control. And here’s a budget tip from the book: regular newspaper works as a cheap weed barrier too. Layer it down, wet it, and let it do its thing.

The downside? Traditional gardens don’t hold moisture well. You’ll be watering more often, and weeds are a constant battle even with barriers. But if you have decent soil and a good-sized yard, this is the no-frills way to get started.

Raised Bed Garden

Raised beds are basically framed boxes filled with soil. Think of them as gardens with walls. And honestly, they solve a lot of problems that traditional gardens create.

Less weeding. Better moisture retention. And if your native soil is terrible (too much clay, too rocky, whatever), raised beds let you skip that problem entirely because you’re bringing in your own soil mix.

Pezza suggests a soil mixture of about half compost, half soil, with a bit of sand mixed in. That gives you good drainage and nutrients right from the start.

For materials, she warns against using wood treated with toxic preservatives. That stuff can leach into your soil and then into your food. Stick with untreated wood, stone, or food-safe materials. You can either sink the frame into the ground a bit or set it right on the surface.

Here’s the thing. Raised beds even work on rooftops. But Pezza makes a really important point: check the weight capacity first. Soil is heavy. Water-soaked soil is heavier. You do not want to find out your roof can’t handle it after you’ve already built the thing.

Straw Bale Gardening

The book includes a fun sidebar on straw bale gardening. You literally plant directly into straw bales. The bales decompose over the season, feeding your plants as they break down. It’s weird. It works. And it’s worth looking into if you want something different.

Container Garden

No yard? No problem. Container gardening is perfect for balconies, patios, porches, or really any small space where you can fit a pot.

More plants work in containers than you’d expect. Tomatoes, peppers, herbs, lettuce, and even some fruits do great. The key is matching your container depth to what you’re growing. Shallow-rooted plants like lettuce need less depth. Tomatoes and peppers need more room for their roots to spread out.

Every container needs drainage holes. This is non-negotiable. Without them, water pools at the bottom and your roots rot. Pezza shares a clever trick for watering: stick a piece of PVC pipe down into the soil so water gets delivered straight to the root zone instead of just running off the surface.

She also covers strawberry pots, which are those tall pots with pockets on the sides. Great for herbs and (obviously) strawberries. And there’s a fun DIY method using hanging buckets turned upside down for growing tomatoes. It looks goofy but it actually works.

The book briefly mentions hydroponics and aquaponics too. These are soil-free growing methods that are getting more popular, but they’re more complex and expensive to set up. Worth knowing about, but probably not your first project.

Vertical Garden

Vertical gardening is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of spreading out, you grow up. And it works with any of the other three garden types.

This is where things like trellises, lattice panels, stakes, and cages come in. Tomato cages are the classic example. You stick a wire cage around your tomato plant and it grows upward instead of flopping all over the ground.

For beans and peas, Pezza describes making teepee structures. Three or four poles tied together at the top, with the plants climbing up them. Simple and effective. For heavier plants, a sturdy lattice or trellis gives better support.

Here’s a detail I really appreciated in the book. When you’re growing heavy fruits like melons on a vertical structure, you need slings to support the fruit as it grows. Otherwise the weight will snap the vine or pull the whole thing down. Old t-shirts, pantyhose, or mesh bags work fine.

She also mentions espalier, which is a technique for training fruit trees to grow flat against a wall or fence. It’s more advanced and takes patience, but it’s a real space-saver if you want fruit trees in a small area.

My Take

I think most beginners should seriously consider raised beds or containers. Traditional gardens work but they require more ongoing effort. And vertical growing isn’t really its own category so much as a technique you can add to any setup.

The container section was my favorite part of this chapter. Not everyone has a yard, and Pezza does a good job of showing that you can grow real food in surprisingly small spaces. The PVC watering trick alone is worth remembering.

Book: Backyard Farming: Growing Vegetables and Herbs by Kim Pezza (ISBN: 978-1-57826-460-5, Hatherleigh Press, 2013)

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