Wooden Terrace Flower Bed - Or: How to Build a Flower Railing
Introduction: Wooden Terrace Flower Bed - Or: How to Build a Flower Railing
We have moved into a house where we have a nice terrace. But as you can see from the picture, it had a downside.
There were no railings between the terrace and the garden, so someone could trip and fall.
In addition, the front edge of the terrace was always wet when it rained.. and the wind mostly blew the water onto the terrace.
And at least - to be honest - isn't it just looking ugly this way?!
When I was thinking about a solution, I came up with the idea of creating a patio flower bed on this edge. That would keep the rain off, it would be a railing and it would look good (hopefully ;) )
Supplies
Tools and consumables I need to build
* Circular saw,
* Drilling machine,
* Grinding machine
* Folding rule,
* Screws
* Concrete
* Wooden Planks
* Wood glue
* Wood preservative stain
* Paint brush
* Sandpaper
* drainage foil
* Garden Soil / Potting Soil
Step 1: Prepare the Terrace
As I noticed, the terrace point to the weather-side (rain). So first thing to do is to protect masonry from moisture to prevent mold.
I've first test it with general plastic foil, but then I decided to choose a professional drainage foil. A drainage foil is much thicker, and has a structure that better prevents waterlogging.
I've made no additional image of this drainage foil in this early stage, but you'll see it in the next step.. be patient, please :)
Step 2: Enhancement of the Plan
As I played a bit with the drainage foil, I thought it would look ugly, if I wouldn't cover the front side of the terrace too.
So I've decided to do an additional flower bed in front of the terrace. The idea was to generate it not only as simple flower bed, but implement an eye catcher into it, so that it optically fit's very well with the flower bed above it (at the terrace).
To put some more eye candy on it, I've decided to make a rounding on each side of the lower flower bed. 74
At the image, you see, where I gave it a try by only staple the stones to see how it would look like.
On the other image you can see the drainage foil I've used, and you see the foundation of the lower flower bed... on both sides I've planed to have a rounding.
As I was sure, this will look good, I've made a foundation of concrete, width of 15 cm and a depth of 15 cm. This should prevent the stones from sinking into the ground over time.
I leave it 48 hours to get dry. As the weather was a bit sunny, I've sprinkled it a bit with water, to prevent the concrete to dry to fast so that it might crack.
Step 3: Stone by Stone
When the concrete was dry and hard I started gluing the bricks. Yes, you read that right, I glued the bricks.
There is an outdoor stone adhesive that you can use well for this.
It seems easier and cleaner to me, instead of bricking the stones with mortar . It works very well.
As you can see at the Image, I've made two curves. One outside, the other one inside.
Do you still have an Idea why ??
The metal brackets on the inner rounding might give you a clue!
As I noticed earlier, the lower flower bed should also get an eye catcher, so I decided to add nice wooden planks in contrast to the stone bricks.
Step 4: Lower Flower Bed Done
At the images, you can see the final result of the lower flower bed with rounding at both sides and the wooden planks in between.
I've also added some kind of steps inside of the rounding which will be filled up with soil later on.
The white pebbles, give a smooth contrast to the gray bricks, and the wooden planks (btw. the color is mahogany)
What you think so far? Still better as the starting position?
We are not done, now we add the above flower bed.
Step 5: Upper Flower Bed
The upper flower bed is like an L shaped box. Unfortunately I didn't shot any pictures while assembling it, but it was pretty easy and straight forward.
I've used wooden planks with tongue and groove, glued the planks together offset to each other and screwed the edges.
On the front side wall of the Terrace (behind the drainage foil of the lower flower bed), I've doweled struts to keep the upper flower bed in place. 353