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Make your space more beautiful and functional with DIY

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How to DIY Raised Garden Bed Cover to Protect Your Garden from Animals

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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.

For more DIY tips and ideas, be sure to follow me on Instagram!

diy garden bed cover for raised bed photo

Get the PDF

I have everything that you need for DIY raised bed cover in this post. But it is a long read. If it’s more convenient, you can purchase the PDF file for only $4.99.

It has the full tutorial with all the pictures, 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.

Why do you need a garden bed cover for your raised bed?

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.

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.

raised bed vegetable garden covers with doors

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:

(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 less than 3 feet deep? There are two reasons:

  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 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 height.

how to build raised garden bed cover to protect your vegetables

And for construction, each garden cover has a pair of doors, attached to the cover 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.

how to build protective covers for raised garden beds DIY

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.

Miter saw to cut the wood

1/2″ spade bit and drill

Wire cutter

2 1/2″ Exterior screws

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 I created in SketchUp. This shows how the pieces attach together.

DIY raised garden bed cover plans

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 SketchUp, to determine the size you’d like to cut.

DIY raised bed cover project cut list

For my particular 3′ by 6′ garden bed, I cut 2 x 2 boards to the following size:

  • Frame: (4) * 73″; (4) * 32″; (4)*48″
  • 2 doors: (4) * 31.5″; (4) * 47.25″
  • Braces: (24) * 6″ (measure from the longest side); The length is relatively flexible.

Please use the above number only for reference. Note that I leave ~1″ out from the depth because I have irrigation tubing sitting on the back edge of the raised bed.

As a bonus for the ebook version of this post, I created a calculator(on page 8) that can help you determine how much to cut your boards that fits your own garden bed dimensions.

You can get the ebook version here with the calculator.

Step 1. Cut 2in x 2in x 8ft 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.

how to build garden cover - DIY project

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.

photo of protective covers for raised garden beds
the longer end of those braces are about 6″

Step 2. Build garden cover frame structure.

DIY raised garden bed enclosure fence, protect garden raised bed from animals and critters

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.

diy project raised bed protective cover photo

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.

how to build garden bed cover to protect your vegetables from animals

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.

raised garden bed cover ideas

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.

DIY raised garden bed protection

Step 3. Attach chicken wire.

diy raised garden bed cage with chickenwire, protective cage cover

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.

chicken wire cover for raised garden bed

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.

chicken wire cover for raised garden bed DIY photo

For corners with braces, cut the chicken wire with a wire cutter, then staple them with exterior grade staples.

chicken wire cover for raised garden bed

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.

photo of diy project raised garden bed cover

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.

raised garden bed protection

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 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).

how to make a raised garden bed cover with hinges

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.

how to make a raised garden bed cover with hinges

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.

raised bed fence with hinges and doors

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.

how to build cover for garden beds

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 I’d suggest you to test our the doors and hardwares, 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.

DIY raised garden bed with fence

Get the PDF

I have everything that you need for DIY raised bed cover in this post. But it is a long read. If it’s more convenient, you can purchase the PDF file for only $4.99.

It has the full tutorial with all the pictures, 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.

More Garden DIY projects

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Easy DIY Trellis for Less Than $5

DIY Tiered Strawberry Planter

DIY Outdoor Plant Shelves

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diy garden bed cover to protect your raiseds bed from animals - raised garden bed with fence

Filed Under: Garden Tagged With: diy, gardening

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Comments

  1. Dawn Ross says

    April 26, 2022 at 7:40 AM

    Hi – Love this design & think it will fit my needs. Just getting into woodworking & was wondering why 73” for the frame dimensions vs. 72”. My bed is a 4’ x 12’ and I was going to create 2, 4 x 6 covers. I also, was going to change the depth dimensions to 48”, as well as, create 4 doors to access the frame on both sides. In addition, I plan to, not use wire chicken wire, but, the smaller holes that comes in the plastic version; unless there is now something easier to handle. I’m an older, Single woman and think that’s best for my limited abilities. Appreciate explanation for the 72” vs. 73” ? Thank you.

    Reply
  2. Marney Bruce says

    March 5, 2022 at 12:37 PM

    Hi Kelin – a friend passed along this terrific idea and I want to try it. We have a cold frame my husband built but the squirrels get in from below! I see you didn’t put chicken wire over the bottom. Did you do anything to deter digging critters?

    Reply
  3. Dian says

    February 13, 2022 at 10:42 AM

    Planning to build a 3’ x 6’ x 4’h garden. IWe are on a slight slope with red clay. If I make a cedar foundation with 2 x ? , can I use cedar for the frame…afraid of warping. Just don’t want wood to warp or leach chemicals into garden.

    Reply
  4. Lisa says

    October 15, 2021 at 11:32 AM

    I bought the ebook and have used the calculator, but I’m unsure if the lumber for the braces is included. Can you verify? Also, how long do you cut the braces? Thanks!

    Reply
    • Kelin says

      March 5, 2022 at 10:52 PM

      I cut them around 6-8 inches long. the braces is not in the calculator because it doesn’t have to be accurate at all – more of a personal preference.

      Reply
  5. Tabitha Castro says

    August 31, 2021 at 3:04 PM

    I’m so happy to have purchased and implemented this cover over my raised garden beds.
    I’m wanting to cover the bed covers with green house plastic to grow further in the fall.
    I was wondering if you have any suggestions on what I could do to hold this plastic in place to these covers? Thank you!

    Reply
    • Kelin says

      September 19, 2021 at 12:12 PM

      I haven’t had experience with plastic coverings, maybe try staples ?

      Reply
  6. Jo says

    May 29, 2021 at 10:13 AM

    Hello!

    We love your design — thank you!!

    For the 45 degree braces — is there a reason that you are countersinking the screws? Do we need to drill the holes with a spade bit?

    Thanks you!

    Reply
    • Kelin says

      May 29, 2021 at 11:20 AM

      it’s because my screw is not long enough given it has to go diagonal, also it creates a cleaner look

      Reply
      • Jo says

        May 29, 2021 at 4:36 PM

        Thank you! Did you use 2 1/2 inch nails? or 2 inch nails? I think the directions list both sizes , , , I wasn’t sure if you used different sizes for different areas. Thank you!

        Reply
        • Kelin says

          May 29, 2021 at 9:29 PM

          yeah I cannot remember on top of my mind, also that will depends on how deep the countersink hole is.

          Reply
  7. Will says

    May 5, 2021 at 6:30 AM

    Hi Kelin, I am trying to purchase your How to Build A Raised Bed Cover eBook using PayPal, and it is not going through?

    Reply
    • Kelin says

      May 5, 2021 at 7:16 AM

      Thanks for letting me know and sorry to hear that. were you purchasing from this link? https://hydrangea-treehouse.myshopify.com/products/raised-bed-cover-ebook

      If so, could you try again and if it doesn’t work, it would be great if you can email me the screens before and after so I can help you. thanks [email protected]

      Reply
      • Will says

        May 5, 2021 at 7:28 AM

        The link you sent me worked! I was trying to purchase from the link on YouTube; that didn’t work, it would not process, just kept spinning. Anyway, great idea and thank you for the design!

        Reply
        • Kelin says

          May 5, 2021 at 8:01 AM

          Glad to hear that and have fun with your garden project! And thanks for flagging it – I forgot to update the youtube link.

          Reply
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Hi there, I’m Kelin. I like making home personalized and pretty using a DIY approach and share everything I’ve learned along the way. Read More.

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