Making raised planters - help please!

[MrsL123]

We want to run some raised wooden beds/planters along a 9 meter length of ugly fencing to hide it. I've found these planters online which will do the job, but they're quite pricey at £100 each and we'd need five of them, so the other option is to make our own. I'm thinking decking boards would be a good option because they're pressure treated and quite sturdy? Each planter needs to be 60cm high/wide and 1.8 meters long, so if we use 2.4m boards there'll be no wastage and we'll only need eight boards to make each one - overall we'll save about £250.

So does anyone have any tips for making them? Hopefully it's not too complicated

With my DIY-limited brain, I'm thinking we'd need to cut some fence posts into sections to act as the corner posts, then just screw the deck boards to them with some decent screws? As the planters are going to be so long I guess we'd need to put some extra posts mid-way along the length too, to give more support? What about a liner for the sides - would stapling pond liner to the inside do the trick, or is there something more suitable (do we even need a liner)? And would it be ok to stop the posts / liner a couple of inches below the surface so they don't show once the planters are filled?

Any advice or tips much appreciated

I got the bloke who helps out in the garden to do this for us and he charged £80 all in including labour, materials/liner etc but I dont know exactly what he did.
Good instructions on here
www.which.co.uk/advice/how-to-make-a-raised-garden-bed/index.jsp

DH made ours a few months ago, will ask him how he did it tonight and report back. I know he got soem planks from B and Q and also used some old builders pallets we had. He did line it, don't think he stapled it, then filled it with lots of old crocks and rubbish and then filled it with topsoil and finally compost. This website looks quite good for advice.

It has lots of salad leaves and herbs growing happily in it now.

I was another thread a while back about it, where the OP was looking to buy one, found a good website and hers ended up costing about a tenner more than our homemade one, which took DH all weekend to make.

DH made our raised beds using ordinary lengths of timber. He fixed them together at the corners using brackets and posts.

I have no idea cost wise as DH works for a builders merchants so obviously got the materials cheaper. But it wasn't very expensive, and didn't take long to do.

We have reused old suitcases that had broken handles/wheels (hint, don't buy cheap suitcases!) as raised beds.

Just cut the lid off and voila!
I drilled some holes in the bottom of the hard shell one for drainage, and then filled with a mix of garden compost and growbag compost. We successfully raised rocket, lettuce, courgettes, peas and spinach last year.

As an added bonus, when we move house, we can take them with us...

DH says your plan sounds good, the corner posts esp are important. He also said to mention the importance of drainage, to make sure the planter is raised off the ground slightly. We have strips of timber screwed underneath ours so it doesn't all touch the ground, iyswim.

Thanks for the words of wisdom everyone, thankfully it sounds quite easy to do!

Taffetacat, do yours have solid bases? We were planning to have bottomless ones and put them directly on the soil, so do you think we'd still need to incorporate some drainage or would it take care of itself? The plan was to position them on the soil, put a bottom layer of stones in and then fill them up with compost/soil to plant in. They'll be quite deep (2 feet) so hopefully this will suffice?

Thanks!

Its fine to put them on top of soil (some of ours our) and then add some rubble/stones for drainage. No need for a solid base.

Yes fine sorry didn't realise they were going on soil. Ours is on the terrace hence our need for drainage.

Ours are on the soil, that way the roots can go down into teh soil underneath too if they are big enough.