“The tiny seed knew that in order to grow
it needed to be dropped in dirt,
covered in darkness, 
and struggle to reach the light.”
— Sandra Kring

Life often needs to grow through the same situation seeds start from and often partnerships do to.
I’m a firm believer in working together with your partner, husband, wife or lover to build/improve your relationship/relationships.
Relationships are not easy, they need hard work, time, determination, passion, friendship, a listening ear, comfort and heart.
Time together is the key and that’s why I love making things together with my hubby Mark.
Not only is his knowledge fascinating, it’s him and me working together, spending quality time together, that makes it so enjoyable.
It’s knowing that when I’m sure he would prefer to be fishing, playing Xbox, taking photographs or having puppsy pillow time (sleeping), rather than getting his tools out and working on diy projects over the weekend, he does it anyway because he wants to see me smile. And I smile a lot when we are doing anything together. 😀

So when I asked him to make me a rather large planter for all my seedlings, he agreed (maybe through gritted teeth 😁).
You may have noticed that wood prices have sky rocketed, so we had to think of the best way possible to make a 3 meter raised border without using loads of wood and it costing the earth.
We decided on using, corrugated iron sheets and lengths 3 x 2  wood.
The only trouble was, even though sheets of corrugated iron were reasonably priced, delivery was astronomical at £78.
No way could I or would I, pay that for 3 sheets to be delivered. Who can afford that!!!
It was back to the drawing board. What else could we use?
After a quick google, we decided to order 3 Black Corrugated Bitumen Sheet 930 x 2000mm, costing –

Subtotal	£33.24 GBP
Postage and packaging	£10.00 GBP
Tax	£8.65 GBP
Total	£51.89 GBP
Payment	£51.89 GB

Unfortunately these never made it to us but ended up being delivered to a block of flats in Newcastle, instead of our home in Hampshire.
To cut a long story short, after many phone calls to the company and angry calls to my hubby from the flat management up in Newcastle, we received a full refund and were back to wondering what to do next.
Time was ticking, the seedlings were growing fast and needed to be planted out.
Mark suggested our local restoration yard, Romsey Reclamation. A quick phone call and Mark was on his way to pick them up.
We brought two 10ft sheets of corrugated iron and one 8ft sheet, costing £56.76

We brought, 8 lengths of 3×2 from, Travis Perkins, at a cost of £76.59.
Timber prices really are ridiculously high. 💸💸💸

Mark made two frames out of the 3x4s, one for the top and the other for the bottom, he joined them together with more 3x4s cut to length/height and cut the corrugated sheets down to size (4 pieces in total). Next he slid them into place while being extra careful not to slice his fingers off and screwed them in place. 
He then capped the top off, with length of 3×2. 
Here it is during construction.

I unfortunately forgot to take photos while we were making it, as we were racing the rain.
Fortunately there are lots of plans and tutorials online if you fancy making one yourselves.
Here is one that looks pretty helpful.

How to Build Raised Garden Beds

After placing the raised border in place, we filled the bottom with slate chipping for drainage, old grass cuttings and tulip and daffodils leaves, that I had cleared from our garden. 
We were hoping to buy hey to fill half the border but unfortunately we were not able to buy any due to a hey shortage. 
We were very lucky that our local farm shop gave us bags full of horse manure., which did the job perfectly, cutting down the cost of soil.
We topped the raised border off with 8 bags of multi compost from our local garden nursery, Gilbert’s.
I didn’t plant it out straight away and left it to settle, watering it over and over again while adding more dirt as it settled.

A week on and it was ready to plant out.

Even though the plants are still babies I hope they will flourish and it will be as pretty as a picture.
We are very happy with how it turned out especially as it was super fast to make and a damn site cheaper than buying planters or raised beds. 
All in, I reckon it’s cost £180, including all materials and soil.  
Not bad for a 3m x 43cm raised border and we have enough materials left over to make some window boxes.

All we have to do now is make them, re-treat the fences, jet wash the patio slabs/decking and design and build a small greenhouse. It’s all very exciting but better still it’s quality time with the hubby. ❤️

Too-da-loo for now.

🦋🦋🦋