My son’s birthday is in late September and we always have a party with friends and family coming over to our house, so that’s a great motivator for my wife and I to complete any large home improvement projects before we show off our house from one year to the next. This year we spent the summer ripping out old shrubs, replacing the wood fence around the entire backyard and our final project was building some quick and relatively cheap flower beds using railroad ties.
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Let me say up front that I know these beds won’t last twenty years and I know they aren’t perfect, but we needed something that was quick and relatively cheap to add some definition to our disastrous back yard flower beds. The previous owners of our home let everything pretty much overrun the yard and go to see for years, so we’re have an uphill battle trying to get our yard even remotely presentable. I actually am not a big fan of railroad tie flowerbeds because they generally rot and shift after only a season or two in my experience. These are the first beds I’d built myself before, though, and the ease and low price tag have definitely won me over for the moment.
I first planned the project out by measuring the size of the beds I wanted. I tried to keep it simple and stuck with a length of four feet from the house. I had two small beds that were also four feet wide, so that would make things pretty easy. I later had a few longer beds to make, but I’ll stick with explaining how I made the shorter flower beds for the moment.
So I had two four foot square flower beds to make. I decided to only make the beds two railroad ties high, though you could definitely go to three or four pretty easily. The railroad ties my wife and I picked out were eight feet long and four inches wide. We simply had to remember that four inch wide thing when stacking and cutting them. I didn’t bother putting ties in the back of the beds since it was against the cement foundation of my home. That means that each bed really needed about three railroad ties, or six railroad ties altogether. They cost just shy of $4.00 a piece so that means I was able to build two flower beds for about $25 in wood. I also bought four long spikes four about $4.00 total and I already had everything else I needed. Everything else was a few drill bits and long deck screws.
I first used a shovel and tape measure and just sort of marked out how the beds were going to run. Then I used my shovel and skimmed off the top layer of grass and leaves that was where the ties were going to lay. I dug down about an inch or two of soil so that I ended up with a fairly square four foot by four foot trench that was about five inches wide or so. I tried to make the trench as even and level as possible, but I didn’t sweat it too much.
Now, I know from cleaning up my yard after the previous owners that railroad ties rot out pretty quickly, especially when they are sat right against damp soil. Sure, you can get specially treated wood that is meant to be in contact with the ground, but that costs a lot more. My solution was to lay down a thin base of stone in that little trench I dug. That way water could drain through the wood, through the stone and then into the soil. In theory my railroad ties won’t rot out nearly as quickly as if they were sitting against damp soil all the time. Time will tell.
So I put down a layer of stone into the trenches (I also have more stone than I know what to do with thanks to the previous owners) and I started cutting the railroad ties. I used a reciprocating saw to cut two four foot lengths for the sides and then a 40 inch piece for the front of the bed. I did this because the sides were each four inches wide. I laid down the front piece and using a level tried to get all three pieces more or less level by putting in a little extra stone beneath them and taking out a little stone from other spots.
Once I had the first layer of railroad ties I moved on to the second layer. In a similar manner I made the two side pieces 44 inches so I’d have room for the front piece all the way across. That was 48 inches long. I placed them on top of the first layer and I was ready to tie it all together!
I simply used some four inch deck screws, though I could have used nails just as easily. I put two screws in each side and two screws through the front, locked all the railroad ties together to some extent, though I could still wiggle them out of line. That’s where the big spikes came in. I drilled out a large hole straight through both ties at the corners of the bed, and then drove long spike into each corner. That served to tie together the corners of the flower bed, keeping the entire frame fairly square and it gave the flower beds a little visual interest.
And that’s pretty much all there is to it! Putting together flower beds with railroad ties is fairly quick and easy. I was building those two small beds in about three hours from start to finish, but I did have the project planned out pretty well.
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