DIY tutorial on how to build a protective cover with hinges for your raised garden bed to prevent animals from attacking your vegetables. This DIY garden bed cover with fencing is a beginner friendly project that you can tackle over a weekend, as it doesn’t require fancy tools or skills.
Why do you need a garden bed cover for your raised bed?
When I first started gardening, I didn’t know the importance of having a protective cover for a raised garden beds. Soon enough, I noticed a lot of my seedlings and vegetables got chewed up down to the ground. It took me a while to figure out it was the squirrels who ate up all of our vegetable crop.
It’s definitely very discouraging to see that happen so I tried numerous ways to repel the squirrels, such as spraying chili water over my plants, or adding an owl statue, but none of them worked.
One day I decided to design and build a protective cover for my raised garden beds that will serve as a cage, in the effort to protect my vegetables from small animals. And I’ms so glad with this DIY garden bed cover! My vegetables are thriving, no more loss of leaves or seedlings! Now I can grow whatever vegetables and fruits I like without worrying if squirrels like them as well. This DIY garden bed cover will work for other animals as well, such as raccoons, deer, and others.
For the first month after I built those garden bed covers, the squirrels got a bit frustrated that there’s no more yummy food for them, so they started to eat some of my tangerines from the tree (I was surprised to see those half peeled and eaten tangerines in my yard), and even one of my tender delphinium plants. But after a month, they seemed to get used to the fact there’s no food in my raised beds, that they just leave my backyard alone.
DIY raised garden bed cover finished dimensions
For my garden beds, I have two standard 3′ by 6′ raised beds (similar one). The finished DIY garden bed cover is about 6 feet wide, 4 feet tall, and slightly less than 3 feet deep.
There are two reasons for reduced depth: 1.I have 1/2″ irrigation tubing sitting on top of the back edge of the raised bed; 2. the fence between our yard and our neighbor’s is quite old so the top portion is slightly leaning to our side. By reducing the depth I’m able to address those two factors.
In terms of the height, I need the garden bed cover to be fairly tall to account for large plants and vines, such as artichokes, peas, and cucumbers. I landed on 4 feet as the height.
In terms of construction, each garden cover has a pair of doors, attached to the cover frame with hinges. I also installed two latches on the top frame to make sure I can close them securely. Also this DIY garden cover is completely covered by chicken wire for all sides except the bottom.
DIY garden bed cover video
If you are a visual learner, I made a 5-minute video on our process of building this DIY garden bed cover with doors and hinges:
I recommend you watch this video to get an idea on what the whole process looks like, then continue reading for DIY materials and step by step instructions 🙂
DIY raised bed cover tools and materials
The material listed below are for one 3′ by 6′ raised bed cover:
Exterior grade 2 in. x 2 in. x 8 ft wood board
Chicken wire. I use 3′ wide chicken wire because it matches well with my 3′ by 6′ raised bed. I used 30′ per garden bed cover.
1/2″ spade bit and drill
Stapler. You can choose a electric stapler to save some elbow grease
Brass hinges x 4 (exterior grade)
Brass barrel bolt x 2 (exterior grade)
DIY raised garden bed cover instructions
Here’s the diagram I created in SketchUp. This shows how the pieces attach together.
For my 3′ by 6′ garden bed (similar to this), I cut 2 by 2 boards to the following size.
Note that I leave 1″ out from the depth because I have irrigation tubing sitting on the back edge of the raised bed. You might need to adjust the number based on your situation. Each cover should be customized for your garden bed, I highly encourage you to draw a diagram on paper or SketchUp, to determine the size you’d like to cut.
DIY raised bed cover project cut list
Frame: (4) * 73″; (4) * 32″; (4)*48″
2 doors: (4) * 31.5″; (4) * 47.25″
Step 1. Cut 2 x 2 x 8 boards to size.
You’ll need to cut those 2×2 boards into two type of pieces, one for building the garden cover frame structure, the other for diagonal braces to support the structure.
All the frame structure pieces are straight cut. All braces are 45 degree diagonal cut.
One trick to quickly produce the braces is to align the board to a point on your miter saw (you can use tape to mark it), and flip it back and forth between cutting. In my case, I used the line(right) on my miter saw to align the 2×2 boards.
If you have watched the video above, you’ll know what I’m talking about. This way you will be able to produce a lot of those pieces in a short amount of time, also they will be exactly the same size without pre-measuring.
To prepare the diagonal braces, I used 1/2″ spade bit to create a dent on each side, about 1″ from the edge.
Step 2. Build garden cover frame structure.
Now it is time to assemble the garden bed cover. For each connection, we drill a pilot hole and then screw in the 2″ exterior wood screw. Pilot holes are important for this project as without them the wood will tend to split while screwing.
Since we don’t have a pocket hole tool, we used two screws per corner where three 2×2 boards attached to each other. We drilled each hole around 1/3 of the way instead of the exact center, that will give the second screw some space to pass through.
Attach a diagonal brace to straighten and strengthen the corner. You’ll need to attach braces for most of the straight corners except:
1. the front side. You want to leave it open so you can add doors.
2. the bottom side. This is to maximize the planting area of you garden bed without blocking the soil. Also the bottom side of the garden cover is just sitting on top of the raised bed, not really holding any weight by itself.
We started by building the back side first, reinforced it with braces on four corners, then move to the front side. Note for the front side of the garden bed cover, that you’ll want to skip reinforcement to leave space for doors. You can reference my video to see how we were assembling the frame.
It’s recommended to dry fit your frame on top of your raised bed to make sure the cover fits well.
After competing the assembly, you should have the basic frame structure of the garden bed cover and a pair of doors. For each door, we have all four corner reinforced with the braces. Now you are ready to attach chicken wire, also called poultry netting.
Step 3. Attach chicken wire.
To handle chicken wire, wear gloves to protect your hands. Because my raised bed is 3′ deep, I’m able to lay 3′ wide chicken wire along three sides of the frame continuously without cutting it – from one side to top, then to the other side.
To attach chicken wire, we used stainless steel staples to make it weather resistant. We used a manual stapler because it is cheaper, but you can use electric stapler as it will make your life a lot easier.
Most of the time the staples won’t go all the way in the wood (at least for our manual one), so we used a hammer to hammer them in more for security.
For corners with braces, cut the chicken wire with wire cutter, then staple them with exterior grade staples.
For the back side (opposite of double doors), we used two panels of 3′ wide chicken wire, attaching them vertically, then used the extra wire which came with the rolls to weave these two panels.
Trim the excess chicken wire. Although both chicken wire and my raised bed is 3′ wide, there will be some extra chicken wire hanging out. I cut them and bent them with a plier to remove the sharp edge. I went into detail in the video on how I dealt with sharp edge after cutting it.
We Attached chicken wire/poultry netting to all four sides of the garden cover frame, leaving front side and bottom side free of chicken wire.
Step 4. Install hinges and barrel bolts
Now attach hinges and barrel bolts. I used brass ones because they are more weather resistant than some other materials.
To ensure doors open widely, I unfold the hinge to its extreme, and marked the holes on the frame. Then drill and attach the hinge to the frame. I used 4 hinges per garden bed cover (2 for each door).
After that, I attached each door to the hinges, and test to make sure it opens and closes smoothly. It is recommended to attach the doors after you place the garden cover on top of your raised beds, since your garden bed may not be completely leveled.
Once the doors were attached. I installed the brass barrel bolts, one per door. I placed the longer part of the barrel bolts on the door because there’s more vertical space. If that’s the case with you, make sure you get the barrel bolts that can lock in position when installed that way.
Step 5. Attach garden bed covers to your raised beds
To attach the protective covers to raised garden beds, I simply let the cover sit on the raised bed structure. Originally I was planning to add a couple screws to attach the bottom frame to the raised bed, but I skipped it because the cover’s weight seems to be enough to hold it in place just fine.
Step 6. Test, tweak, and enjoy your DIY garden bed cover
That’s all the steps for this DIY garden cover and you made to the end, well almost! Now it is time test our the doors and hardwares, making sure everything function well. If there’s any glitches, don’t be afraid to tweak it until things open and lock smoothly. I did some tweaking on the door hinges and barrel bolts until the door open and close well.
So that is it! I hope you enjoy this DIY raised garden bed cover tutorial and leave me a comment if you have any questions.
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This idea is amazing! I have to build something like that in my garden because I have got a big problem with animals that come and destroy mine work. Last year I had a tough time as they destroyed all of my lettuce. Leaves were totally eaten, there was left only a waste! This year I decided to grow some but in containers on my balcony..It works but it’s not the same as growing in my yard where I have got much bigger space. This time I have grown only a few lettuces which seeds I ordered on https://gardenseedsmarket.com/butterhead-lettuce-edyta-ozarowska-large-and-vividly-green.html ..They are still growing, it’s amazing to look at them getting bigger every day! Thanks for your post, I have got it in my mind!
Hey Lara,
I’m so glad it’s helpful to you! I had the exact same problem as you last year – the squirrels ate all my pea, squash, bean leaves that I barely harvested anything from my garden. This year with the help of DIY’ed garden cover I’m finally able to grow vegetables again 🙂
How did you attach the cover to the base? Or did you just set it on top of the raised bed? Trying to figure out how to refresh the soil in there if the cage is attached to the base
I don’t attach it because it sit on my raised bed just fine with its weight. Also with double door open you might be able to refresh the soil with the raised bed cover on. Hope that helps!
Hi. This is awesome; however, I don’t see any instruction for making the doors, such as measurements and how you covered them with chicken wire. I look forward to building a couple of these for a new planting space. Thanks!
Denise
In my area ground squirrels and moles are a big problem, eating root veg from below. So I need heavy wire layers under the raised bed to protect my veg.