About this site
Raised Bed Plans is a single purpose tool built to answer one recurring question before building a raised garden bed: exactly which boards to cut, how many standard boards to buy, what hardware to get, and how much soil it takes to fill it. Instead of a generic size chart, this site's configurator calculates a full cut list from the length, width, and height you actually want, using the real milled dimensions of the lumber rather than its nominal size.
What the free configurator does
Enter an outside length, width, and height, and pick cedar, pine, or redwood, and the configurator returns the long and end wall board lengths for every course, the corner post length, whether a center brace is needed, how many standard 8, 10, or 12 foot boards to buy with the leftover offcut, an estimate of screws and corner brackets, and the soil volume in cubic feet, cubic yards, and bag count, all updated instantly without reloading the page.
The free 4x2 Starter Plan
Alongside the configurator, a one page printable plan for the most common first bed size, 48 by 24 inches, is available after providing an email address, with a dimensioned diagram, cut list, and the six step build sequence.
The Raised Bed Build Pack
For anyone building more than one bed, the paid Raised Bed Build Pack is a 28 page reference covering six complete plans, a 4x2, a 4x4, a full size 4x8, a narrow 2x8, a waist height bed on legs, and an L-shaped bed, each with a top view, an exploded view, a cut list, hardware, an assembly sequence, and build variants, plus a chapter on choosing wood and its real lifespan in soil contact.
Independence and accuracy
This site is not affiliated with any lumber yard or wood supplier. Lifespan figures for cedar, pine, and redwood used throughout the site describe typical ranges for untreated wood in soil contact; actual lifespan depends on climate, moisture, and the specific board, which is why the site consistently describes these figures as typical ranges rather than a guarantee.
Questions
Anything unclear about the configurator, the free plan, or the Build Pack can be sent through the contact page.
