Want to learn how to make a raised garden bed cover with hinges to protect your precious raised garden beds from animals? This DIY garden bed cover with fence is perfect for you! It is a beginner friendly project that you can tackle over a weekend, as it doesn’t require fancy tools or skills. At the end, you’ll have a garden bed fence that perfectly sized for your raised bed.
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Get the Build Plan
I have most of instructions that you need for this DIY project in this post. But it is a long read. If it’s more convenient, you can purchase printable plan here, including a cut list calculator here: DIY Garden Bed Cover Build Plan $4.99.
It has the full instruction with expanded details, optimized in a book format, faster to read, and free of ads. This way you can print it out and bring it with you when you are shopping for materials or building this project.
This build plan also include a do-it-for-you cut list calculator so you input your garden bed measurement and get your custom cut list. Click on the picture below to purchase.
Why do you need a garden bed cover for your raised bed?
In general, protective covers for raised garden beds are a great idea for gardeners looking for a way to protect their plants from harsh temperatures, pests, and other environmental factors. There are a variety of garden bed cover ideas to choose from, ranging from plastic covers to mesh covers, depending on the needs of the gardener.
It serves as a garden cage to keep your crops in and keep the animals out. For me, the biggest reason behind my DIY raised garden bed covers project is to protect my garden bed from animals so our plants can stay alive and thrive.
When I first started my vegetable garden on my two raised beds, I didn’t know the importance of having a protective cover for my 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.
At first, I was lazy and tried several ineffective ways to repel the squirrels, such as spraying chili water over my plants, and adding an owl statue. But none of them worked!
So I was determined to get a garden bed cover to win this war with squirrels for good, and I built this DIY garden bed cover with hinged doors. And since then, I haven’t had to worry about any pesky animals in my garden again. Woohoo!
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.
How to make a raised garden bed cover with hinges video tutorial
If you are a visual learner, I made a 5-minute video on our process of building this DIY garden bed cover with double hinged doors:
(If you are having trouble seeing this video, you can watch it on my Youtube.)
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 🙂
If you want to watch more videos like this, be sure to subscribe to my Youtube Channel.
DIY raised garden bed cover finished dimensions
For my garden beds, I have two standard 3′ by 6′ raised beds, similar to this one. The finished DIY garden bed cover is about 6 feet wide, 4 feet tall, and slightly less than 3 feet deep.
Why did I reduce the depth of my raised garden bed cover? There are two reasons:
- I have 1/2″ irrigation tubing sitting on top of the back edge of the raised bed.
- 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 garden cage depth I’m able to address those two factors.
In terms of deciding this garden bed cover and doors height, I need this protective 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 garden cage height.
This raised garden bed covers is made from wood and installed with hinges to make them easy to open and close. So each garden bed cover has a pair of doors, attached to the frame with hinges. I also installed two barrel bolt 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. Chicken wire is a durable weather resistant material for garden covers, and does a great job at keeping animals out from my garden bed.
Btw, this DIY garden cage can be removable if you like, or you can attach it to your raised bed securely. I’ll share more on that in details during the instructions.
DIY raised bed cover tools and materials
Here are the materials I used for this DIY garden cage. Most materials listed below are for one 3′ by 6′ raised bed cover, and you may need to adjust the size accordingly depends on how large you want your garden cage to be:
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.
Miter saw to cut the wood
1/2″ spade bit and drill
Stapler. You can choose a electric stapler to save some elbow grease
Stainless steel staples (exterior grade)
Brass hinges x 4 (exterior grade)
Brass barrel bolt x 2 (exterior grade)
DIY raised garden bed cover instructions
Here’s the diagram of this garden bed cover I created in SketchUp. This shows how all the pieces come together.
For my 3′ by 6′ garden bed (similar to this raised bed), 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 would encourage you to draw a diagram on paper or 3D tool like SketchUp, to determine the size you’d like to cut, or purchase my ebook to get a cut list.
DIY raised bed cover project cut list
I built this garden bed cover to fit 3’x6′ garden bed. Depends on your raised bed size, the length of wood board you need to cut will vary. Because the wood boards are 1.5″ thick, it is relatively easy to calculate. I recommend you to sketch it out on a paper to figure out the size you need for each piece.
If you have purchased the build plan for this project, I created a do-it-for-you calculator(on page 7), where you’ll input your garden bed size, and it will tell you how much to cut your boards that fits your specific garden bed dimensions.
You can get the build plan here with the calculator.
Step 1. Cut 2in x 2in x 8ft boards to size.
To build the frame of this DIY garden cage, 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. I have used spade bit quite a lot for counter sink screws.
Step 2. Build garden cover frame structure.
Now moving onto assembling the garden bed cover. For each connection, we drill a pilot hole and then screw in the 2″ exterior wood screw. You’ll want to choose exterior grade screws because they won’t rust and deteriorate your raided bed protective cover.
Also, drilling pilot holes is important for this project as without them the wood will tend to split while you attach them.
If you have a pocket hole jig, use it as it will make your life a lot easier.
We didn’t own a pocket hole tool back then, so we used two screws per corner where three 2×2 boards meet. 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 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, which is also called poultry netting.
Step 3. Attach chicken wire.
To handle chicken wire, wear gloves to protect your hands. Note the main animals I’m trying to deter are squirrels and mouse, if your garden animal have stronger teeth, consider using garden fence such as this one.
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 a 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 with a wire cutter.
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 to your raised garden bed cover. 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 openest position, 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.
You can attach this garden bed cover by screwing it into the raised bed. If you need to separate the cover from raised bed often, you can use a few barrel bolt to hold them together – which I learnt from one of my readers.
Step 6. Test, tweak, and enjoy your DIY garden bed fence
That’s all the steps for this DIY garden fence and you made to the end. At this time I’d like to suggest you to test our the doors and hinges, making sure everything function well.
If there are 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. Garden bed fences are an essential way to keep unwanted animals out of your garden.
Get the Build Plan
I have most of instructions that you need for this DIY project in this post. But it is a long read. If it’s more convenient, you can purchase printable plan here, including a cut list calculator here: DIY Garden Bed Cover Build Plan $4.99.
It has the full instruction with expanded details, optimized in a book format, faster to read, and free of ads. This way you can print it out and bring it with you when you are shopping for materials or building this project.
This build plan also include a do-it-for-you cut list calculator so you input your garden bed measurement and get your custom cut list. Click on the picture below to purchase.
Tips for building a large garden protective cover
If you are building a raised garden cage with one dimension longer than 6 feet wide, consider adding middle pieces to reinforce the structure.
This photo shared by my reader Mary is an awesome example for inspirations.
Her raised bed cage is 8′ wide, 4′ deep and 6′ high. She added supporting piece to back, top and the front between doors.
She also mentioned this enabled her to attach 2’ wide chicken wires without having to weave them. What a great idea!
DIY protective covers for raised garden beds summary
Now you should be able to build your very own garden cage in the desired sizes to enclose your garden bed completely and protect it from animals. Building a fence for your garden bed can be a game changing in your gardening journey and best of luck with your project!
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Thank you for this fabulous, detailed tutorial. I used your template to build covers for my four 8-ft garden beds. It was a lot of work for one person, but I paced myself over the month of April. In the end, it was a fun and very gratifying DIY project.
Yay kudos to completing your DIY project! It is definitely not easy if you were doing it yourself, but I hope it will be a rewarding experience since your garden is protected now 🙂
Hi Mary J.!
I too have 8-foot beds (8’x4′), and am wondering if you made each door the full 4 feet wide. If so, how did that go? I’m wondering if they are going to be very heavy. If not, what did you do? Any comments would be welcome!
I went to purchase the eBook and the PayPal browser closed automatically. Tried 3 browsers, tried 2 mobile options. I think something is broken with the purchase link. Any ideas?
Hi Edward, I think I just fixed. Do you want to try again and see if paypal window shows up this time?
Thanks Kelin! It does work now. Perfect. Can’t wait to start this project for our new raised beds!
glad it worked! good luck with you project 🙂
I have an enclosed raised vegetable garden, but due to some back yard landscaping, I will have to rebuild it and this is a great replacement, easy to install. Thanks for the video.
Glad you found this post helpful 🙂 Good luck with rebuilding your raised garden enclosure!
Thank you for the video and instructions for this bed cover. I really like that the doors open., which gives you complete access to the garden. I have two elevated garden beds that are 2′ x 4′ that I would like to make the covers for. I will have to figure out how to adjust the measurements.
About how much time did it take you to build and install this project?
Thank you Kelin for this post. We have just installed two raised beds, each 4 ft x 8 ft (about 1.2 m x 2.4 m). Last year our container plants (tomatoes, peppers, &c.) had trouble with deer, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, birds, and opossums, so we aren’t messing about and before planting anything straight away built covers over the raised beds, based very much on your design. We ordered 2×2 cedar from a lumber yard, which probably cost more than the regular wood from the hardware store but will survive much longer. (This is in North Carolina, a rather wet climate and where termites are naturally endemic in the soil.) It looks like comments here cannot include pictures, but to describe them: each cover has two doors (each 2 ft wide, so the openings are 4 ft wide) on each long side. Each cover is held in place by four 6-inch (15 cm) long, 3/8 inch (10 mm) diameter eye bolts sunk through the cover base into deep holes drilled in the raised-bed timbers (which are 2×6). The bolts are not screwed in or fastened in any way; they just sit in the holes. This should be enough so that if deer casually bump into the covers, they will not be knocked off the raised beds. (Ours are not against a fence like yours that would serve as a backstop.) But we can still pull the bolts and take the covers off if needed for serious maintenance.
Dave,
I too will build this as 4×8 ft garden.
Are the 4 foot doors too heavy? Does the top cross wood interfere with going in and out of garden?
Did you cut corner brackets? If yes, what is their length on long side?
Thanks
Carol
Thanks for posting about your experience, Dave. I am about to make covers for two 4×8 beds myself, and I was wondering if I really needed each door to be 4 feet wide. What you did sounds brilliant, because with 4 feet openable in the middle of the 8′ run, there will only be 2′ on each end that you have to reach into, and that’s totally do-able. Thanks again.
This is great. Just made one myself using your plans. I didn’t have room for doors so I replaced the hinges with barrel bolts so instead of doors, I have removable panels.
Do you find that bees and other beneficial insects are deterred by the fencing?
I haven’t had that problem so far as insets can fly through the chicken wires.
Thank you so much for these clear instructions. I was successful in creating this fruit/veggie cage to protect my tomato plants from squirrels and other critters this season! Another benefit is that I can string tomatoes attaching the twine to the top of the cage, rather than individual cages for each plant. I added a waterproof coating to the wood in hopes that my hard work lasts longer. Thank you again!
omg that is smart! tying tomato to the wire is very helpful since tomato plants tend to fall over a lot.
Great hardening ideas, but even better background music! Who is the artist?
Thanks Sarah! The music is from Youtube free music library haha.
Great enclosure, we made a few very similar for our VEG TRUG raised planters and plan to build your same design this spring. I have two suggestions for anyone planning to build one. In my area, a suburb of Chicago, we have available coated wire screen, both chicken wire and square fabric. I would recommend the green coated 1/2″ square wire fabric. Field mice and small chipmunks can get through the octagon of chicken wire and the green coating keeps it from rusting over the next few years. Second, do not use a hook and eye style locking. You definitely need the bolt style you used. both the squirrels and the chipmunks learned to lift the hook to open the door
Thanks for your great suggestions Nick!
I love this!!! Can you tell us estimate cost of all this?
Hi Masha, it’s been a while so I don’t remember but I have linked the materials of this project so hopefully it gives you a sense of the cost 🙂
Hi! I’m interested in building this for the spring. I can’t seem to find a dimension for the diagonal braces. Am I missing these in the article, or does it not matter how long you cut them, as long as they have the correct angle. Thanks!
It doesn’t matter as it is only used to support the frame 🙂
Hi! Thank you for these instructions. I’m excited to build some to deter squirrels from our many raised beds.
I’m pretty new to woodworking. Could you tell me what the spade bit is for? Is it necessary to use it, or can I simply drill into the braces? Not sure if this matters, but I did buy a pocket jig to make angled holes.
Thank you!
Hi Sarah, so happy you are planning to build this cover for your raised bed!
Regarding the spade bit, no you don’t necessarily need it. The reason I used spade bit is because 1. I don’t have a pocket jig. 2. If I don’t make a pocket, I have to use a super long screw for the joint.
Hi,
This was very informative and I love your idea! I am trying to build this for a raised bed that is 18 inches tall, 4 feet wide, and 10 feet long. I am having trouble understanding how to convert your measurements to mine. Can you help me? I would like the cage with doors to be 5 feet tall.
Hi Carla, I’d recommend you draw it out on a paper with what your measurement and work backwards. It would take some time but totally worth it. Good luck with your project 🙂
Do you plan to install barrel bolts at the bottom of the doors?
Perhaps it would be good to do as the wooden boards tend to warp after a while.
yes that’s a very good point! I might need to install them in the future as the door frames started to warp a bit
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.
That’s probably a good idea! wire on the garden bed cover and also in the groud!
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
I do t have door measurement in the post. also I include how I staple chicken wire to the raised bed cover doors.
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, I’m just wondering if you’re still relying on just weight to keep in place ? I made something very similar last summer,to keep cats out, but they blew off in the autumn storms so need attached. Pondering how to do so whilst maintaining detachability.
Cheers,
Pete
Yes I am, the weather has been pretty mild from where I live so I haven’t had any need to secure them, also I never take them out either.
If I were to secure them, I will drive in a few outdoor screws but that doesn’t offer easy detachbility. You could try adding some bolt or latches to secure the bottom to the raised bed.
Thanks – I think I’ll screw on an adjacent rail and use horizontal pegs through them to secure.
Maybe the barrel bolts on the bed and the cover. That way you can detach them but they wont blow away?
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 🙂