Chic raised beds help make growing veggies easy

JOAN CAINE'S Lake Forest Park garden used to look much like her neighbors'. But that was before she hired Cameron Scott of Exteriorscapes to turn her front yard into a flourishing food factory.

Scott designed raised metal beds so sculptural they could be a residential-scale riff on Richard Serra's "Wake" at the Olympic Sculpture Park. The sleek, shiplike rusted steel curves through the front garden, lending as much presence in winter as in summer when bursting with herbs and vegetables.

Caine is a busy management consultant who has little time to tend her garden. But she's also a former cooking instructor and restaurant reviewer as well as a dedicated foodie who takes great joy in harvesting fresh organic food when she gets home from work. She told Scott she wanted space to grow herbs, lettuces and vegetables for everyday cooking. She wanted the garden to be easy-care and built of sustainable materials. And she wanted it to look great — no railroad-tie beds out in her front garden, please.

Scott ripped out most of the front lawn, then laid down a thick bed of gravel. He tucked the metal sheets into the gravel a few inches for stability, then topped it off with a layer of crushed granite. He chose an architectural steel called Cor-Ten for the beds, so thin it takes up a minimum of space. The steel is black when raw, slowly weathering to a rusty patina. But it never rusts through. Scott coated the inside with a natural rubber product so the metal won't leach into the soil. He filled the beds with a rich mixture of soil and compost, which Caine refreshes early each spring. The beds are anchored at the edges with recycled steel poles that double as supports for tomatoes, peas and beans. The beds are open at the bottom, so the compost-rich soil drains freely.

"It's so easy to take care of," says Caine, who is delighted with her highly productive garden. Snugly encased in metal, the soil warms up early in spring, plants are (mostly) protected from slugs, and the 2-foot-high beds hold food aloft so Caine needn't bend over too far to snip chives or pull a few beets to cook for dinner.

The focal point of the garden is an herbal spiral. Despite its small footprint, the 4-foot-high spiral has space for Caine to grow lovage, oregano, thyme, coriander, marjoram, chives and sorrel; the mint grows a little too happily. "I do love it, although I shouldn't have planted it," says Caine of the over-vigorous mint. "I just keep ripping it out."

Every spring, Caine tries out new varieties of herbs and vegetables, encouraged by how easy it is to experiment in beds raised up for easy digging. This spring she's added dill, salad burnet, fennel and lemon verbena to the spiral. In the larger beds she's growing favorites like 'Bloomsdale' spinach, arugula, sugar snap peas and 'Oregon Giant' snow peas. She's excited to harvest her first crops of 'Garden Oasis' cucumber from Renee's Garden Seeds, and Territorial Seed Company's 'Erste Ernte' spinach and its pale yellow 'Ziata' radish.

Can't you just picture the delicious yin-yang effect of pale, soft loose-leaf lettuces foaming up out of the sculptural metal beds?

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer. Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com. Jacqueline Koch is a Seattle-based freelance writer and photographer.