Built For The Boulevard

Designed to be cut from recycled pallets, assembled by hand at community build days, and to withstand the trials of boulevard life, our custom raised beds are the centerpiece of the spaces we envision.

Ready for life in Victoria

We've lost enough plants to know that you can't garden in Victoria without a strategy for deer. The details of our netting system are still being refined but the foundation is solid: UV-resistant PVC hoops built right into the bed itself. Our design also features standoffs to hold the netting slightly away from the bed, giving your plants some extra space to grow.

Evolution of our design

The first garden beds we built were more conventional — mostly square and held together with screws. We quickly realized that, with our commitment to pallets as a wood source, flat-sided designs presented several challenges. Flat-sided beds require planks that span the full width of the bed. Pallets make this difficult because their planks are often split or damaged at the ends, leading to a lot of wood being scrapped.

Kunimasa assembles a square garden bed in 2020

Production logistics also become increasingly difficult the more parts you have. In the bed Kuni is building above, you can see at least three different shapes of wood, each of which needs to be cut and stored separately, and in the appropriate amounts.

Holding flat-sided beds together also inevitably requires fasteners — screws, nails, staples, etc. — which should ideally be made of stainless steel to prevent rust streaking and increase the longevity of the bed. More parts also means more fasteners, which get expensive quickly. Using stainless makes this problem much worse.

We soon settled on something unconventional: a circular bed held together by a stainless steel cable threaded through each plank.

One of the first circular beds in front of the older, square design (2021)

This approach offers another interesting advantage. When it's time to retire the bed, you don't have to deal with a bunch of half-rusted nails sticking out of half-rotten planks. Instead, you can pull the stainless cable out intact, thread it through a new set of planks, and wrap it back around the soil block from the original bed. No disturbance to the plants or soil structure. Plus, since the wood has no metal in it, you can compost or mulch it rather than bringing it to the dump.

Ordering a Raised Bed — What to Expect

Curbside members access raised beds through the boulevard sharing program. For gardeners that want a bed of their own, we now offer a 100% cedar variant for purchase on a sliding scale. This is what you can expect if you choose to buy a bed from us.

1. local_shipping

   Delivery & soil

   All raised beds will be delivered by us to customers inside the municipality of Victoria. If you elect to receive soil with your bed(s), we will arrange a separate delivery of soil from a landscape supplier on your behalf. If you live outside Victoria, send us a message.

2. payments

   Pricing

   We see this as an opportunity for people to support our project in the spirit of a donation while also getting something in return. That's why our beds are priced on a sliding scale with a $250 minimum — to help cover other operational costs at Curbside. As a nonprofit, all income from bed sales goes straight into keeping the project afloat and improving it for next season.

3. calendar_today

   Delivery date

   We will do our best to deliver your order in time for the growing season, but our primary commitment must remain to our boulevard program and its members. As such, we are not guaranteeing a delivery date or taking payment at this point. We will contact you about your order and collect payment when we're ready to start making deliveries.

4. build

   Material & design tweaks

   The bed you'll receive is made from cedar planks instead of pallet wood, but is otherwise the same as our standard beds. We're still tweaking our design so the version you get may not be exactly what is pictured (but it will be better). We'll provide more info before the final sale to make sure you know what you're getting.