Below is a photograph of the area where we planned to build the raised flower bed. Click on the image to see a larger photograph.
There was very little digging involved, mostly where the timbers were to be placed. Once we had the timbers "built" then we contacted Jeanne's son, Larry, who came over with his drill and a special, long drill bit. We then took down the timber wall, one piece at a time, and laid them out on the driveway in the order we took them down. Then we put them back a few at a time so Larry could drill down through them (about 6 at a time) so we could insert iron re-bars to hold the wall in place. Finally, when we reached the top timber we didn't want holes in it to show the re-bars so we put in the re-bars though the 2nd from the top and left them sticking above the timber about 2". Then we figured out where these re-bars would hit the top timber, drilled partial holes in the under side of the timbers, and placed them on top of the 2nd from the top timbers. Now the wall looked like it had just be laid with no support!
The photograph below shows our wall prior to drilling the support holes from the re-bar. We used several of the re-bars to hold the wall up during initial construction.
We then ordered several tons of top soil that we shoveled into the space behind the wall. Then all that was necessary was to fill the bed with flowers. That we finally did late in the year with pansies. To see the final flower bed please see our 2007 page.
