Creative Landscaping With Berms and Raised Beds

What is a berm? For centuries, berms have been used for privacy, to protect certain areas, to fortify or insulate structures, and to add spice to one's landscape. These are nothing more than raised earthen areas; more recently, their popularity as raised gardening areas is on the rise. Surrounded with heavy timbers, stone retaining walls, or free-standing, they are an attractive means by which you can create the illusion of more topography, a more three-dimensional site, in level areas.

Gently sloped berms are great for erosion control and can be also be useful for adding eco-friendly privacy while waiting for your new plantings to achieve a nice buffer height. Berms should fit subtly into your landscape, recommended heights being from 1 to 2 feet above ground level. Like raised garden beds, they can be interspersed throughout your landscape or used to create a border-like feel in a corner or at its edges.

Gardening berms, as do raised beds, save money: you only need to add fertilizer, compost, and mulch to the beds and berms. Same goes for watering efforts and costs; these conserve water as you only need to water the raised areas. For creating gardens from scratch, berms are ideal; it is easy to amend soil with nutrients, add mulch, and blend everything together while building the height of each mound. Berms lend themselves nicely to feng shui landscaping: add cedar chips, some colorful blooms, a ground cover or juniper bush, a water fountain, some ornamental grasses, and an edging of rounded stones and you've create beautiful garden oasis.

Raised gardening beds are a handy way to lengthen your growing season, whether flower or vegetable growing or both. They seem to warm up faster in the spring months and retain more heat in the autumn months. Thus, they tend to produce blooms and produce earlier in the year and continue to yield later as well. Gardeners state that these small spaces tend to produce more of both flowers and vegetables.

Raised beds can be bordered or contained by pavers, stone walls, slate or vinyl enclosures, bricks, etc. or can be more geometrical, formal-style yet freestanding berm-like beds. They can be temporary, such as low-lying enclosures in a vegetable garden for different plantings, or more permanent. With either, be sure to amend and loosed topsoil and blend your soil amendments well. Raised beds can also be used to buffer, border, or highlight certain areas of your landscape - or, they can themselves become a highlight. Either way, one of my favorite features of both berms and raised garden beds is that not only are they easier to tend and weed, my back doesn't get stiff from long periods of bending over to do it.

Article written by Steve Boulden. Steve is a professional landscaping contractor and designer who specializes in small gardens and xeriscaping. He also spends much of his time offering free advice to do it yourselfers and home owners.