Raised Bed in Garden

When we put in the lawn last year we left about 4m x 2m at the end for a raised bed - with the improvement in the weather we have finally started to make some progress on putting this in now. Unfortunately we had left a some soil in a heap on this space which needed digging out, and I had very foolishly left some turf on top which also needed clearing:

This filled two and half builders bags once it was sufficiently dug out (about 50mm below the level of the paving.) Finishing on the end of day 1:

Next day sleepers arrived, 100x200x2400mm (4"x8"x8' in old money) - they came from a local timber merchant and were rather cumbersome to move around:

We also put in some weed proof membrane to stop anything we missed coming through:

And the first mock up assembly to judge position - ends made from half sleepers:

This was useful for deciding on the placement i.e. directly centred on 4m x 2m space or offset to one side or the other. Also useful for discovering that assembling this and getting it flat, level and correctly aligned was going to be fiddly. Anyhow some time passed and I realised I needed to drive in some piles, get these to the right level and then build the raised bed on top of these. Made 8 (one for each end of each side of the bed) 300mm piles from some spare timber:

Also surveyed the site and put down string and pegs to get the basic positioning of the piles correct:

This was also the first time I have ever used the Pythagorean identity while gardening to confirm that the survey lines were perpendicular:

Anyhow, then installed piles with the aid of my trusty 4lb hammer, confirming that the resulting lines were level then verified that everything was positioned correctly:

Having made sure that the wood sits flat, they were removed and the membrane replaced. To fix the sections of timber to one another I used 16 x 150mm screws:

Key point here: this wood is quite tough so 150mm self tapping screws require a lot of torque to get in, much much more than is achievable through a #3 pozidrive screw:

Succeeded in the end with the aid of a lot of cursing and occasionally mole grips. Should have used bolt-headed, hex-bolt or torx screw. Anyhow, once layer 1 was complete the second was somewhat easier:

Last part of this work was to put the soil back in and put some gravel around (850kg of 20mm Cotswold, delivered from AWBS) - final view:

Will probably top up the soil once it has settled some.