Wooden Terrace Flower Bed - Or: How to Build a Flower Railing

We have moved into a house where we have a nice terrace. But as you can see from the picture, it had a downside.

There were no railings between the terrace and the garden, so someone could trip and fall.

In addition, the front edge of the terrace was always wet when it rained.. and the wind mostly blew the water onto the terrace.

And at least - to be honest - isn't it just looking ugly this way?!

When I was thinking about a solution, I came up with the idea of creating a patio flower bed on this edge. That would keep the rain off, it would be a railing and it would look good (hopefully ;) )

Tools and consumables I need to build

• Circular saw,
• Drilling machine,
• Grinding machine
• Folding rule,
• Screws
• Concrete
• Wooden Planks
• Wood glue
• Wood preservative stain
• Paint brush
• Sandpaper
• drainage foil
• Garden Soil / Potting Soil

As I noticed, the terrace point to the weather-side (rain). So first thing to do is to protect masonry from moisture to prevent mold.

I've first test it with general plastic foil, but then I decided to choose a professional drainage foil. A drainage foil is much thicker, and has a structure that better prevents waterlogging.

I've made no additional image of this drainage foil in this early stage, but you'll see it in the next step.. be patient, please :)

As I played a bit with the drainage foil, I thought it would look ugly, if I wouldn't cover the front side of the terrace too.

So I've decided to do an additional flower bed in front of the terrace. The idea was to generate it not only as simple flower bed, but implement an eye catcher into it, so that it optically fit's very well with the flower bed above it (at the terrace).

To put some more eye candy on it, I've decided to make a rounding on each side of the lower flower bed. At the image, you see, where I gave it a try by only staple the stones to see how it would look like.

On the other image you can see the drainage foil I've used, and you see the foundation of the lower flower bed... on both sides I've planed to have a rounding.

As I was sure, this will look good, I've made a foundation of concrete, width of 15 cm and a depth of 15 cm. This should prevent the stones from sinking into the ground over time.

I leave it 48 hours to get dry. As the weather was a bit sunny, I've sprinkled it a bit with water, to prevent the concrete to dry to fast so that it might crack.

When the concrete was dry and hard I started gluing the bricks. Yes, you read that right, I glued the bricks.

There is an outdoor stone adhesive that you can use well for this.

It seems easier and cleaner to me, instead of bricking the stones with mortar . It works very well.

As you can see at the Image, I've made two curves. One outside, the other one inside.

Do you still have an Idea why ??

The metal brackets on the inner rounding might give you a clue!

As I noticed earlier, the lower flower bed should also get an eye catcher, so I decided to add nice wooden planks in contrast to the stone bricks.

At the images, you can see the final result of the lower flower bed with rounding at both sides and the wooden planks in between.

I've also added some kind of steps inside of the rounding which will be filled up with soil later on.

The white pebbles, give a smooth contrast to the gray bricks, and the wooden planks (btw. the color is mahogany)

What you think so far? Still better as the starting position?

We are not done, now we add the above flower bed.

The upper flower bed is like an L shaped box. Unfortunately I didn't shot any pictures while assembling it, but it was pretty easy and straight forward.

I've used wooden planks with tongue and groove, glued the planks together offset to each other and screwed the edges.

On the front side wall of the Terrace (behind the drainage foil of the lower flower bed), I've doweled struts to keep the upper flower bed in place.

Then I sanded the boards, glazed them with the mahogany wood preservative stain and mounted them to the struts.

On the images - where I placed some potted plants to see, how it will look like :) - you can see the white struts, which are doweled on the front side of the Terrace.

The struts also have another important functionality. As the are doweled at the wall, and the box will be screwed outside of the struts, there is a gap. The reason for the gap is to allow water to flow from the top bed to the bottom bed.

At least I've lined the entire box with drainage foil. Don't forget to build a slope in the ground of the box, so that the water can drain down to the lower flower bed and does not lead to waterlogging.

We filled the box with soil - you can't believe how much soil went in there :)

When all the hard work was done, I've finished the work with some corner moldings and we plant some flowers.

Really a very gratifying moment!

But wasn't there a thing I forgot to mention ?

Yep, below the Terrace, there is a small space which is used as storage space. So I had to create two little doors for it.

The first attempt was to fix the hinges of the doors close to the ground, which unfortunately didn't work well. They quickly tore out due to the mechanical stress and leverage

Therefore, as a final solution, I simply screwed 2 screws into the wooden struts behind the doors and drilled a hole on the back of the wooden doors. So I can simply hang the doors on the two screws - like hanging a picture in the living room, for example.

That's it! That's was my Garden-Project which needs a lot of effort, but I'm very satisfied with the results.

What do you think about - before and after?