How to make beautiful and unusual brick beds with your own hands

Choosing and preparing a site

People usually plant a lot of flowers on their backyards or summer cottages, and this is understandable - only aesthetic pleasure can restore strength after a hard day's work in the name of the future harvest. At the dacha, I want to relax, and not just work, so I want to make beautiful flower beds of the most exquisite shapes, to plant different flowers on them, which will delight with their appearance and aroma throughout the season. The great thing about this is that you can do everything yourself, embody your idea of ​​beauty, and not talk to a landscape designer hired for a lot of money.

Before starting work, you need to decide on the shape of the flower bed and its content. The choice of place depends on what flowers are planned to be planted. Since the flower bed is made so that it can be admired, it must be in plain sight: it must be clearly visible from the house or gazebo, where we usually rest and receive guests. But it cannot be placed in absolute shade from a house or other structures - flowers need a sufficient amount of sunlight.

The choice of flowers largely determines the place of the future flower bed: you need to choose so that they can all grow in similar conditions, so that their requirements for illumination and the amount of moisture coincide, so that there are no plants nearby that cannot tolerate each other. The shape of the flower garden and the place are also interconnected. Ring beds, placed in a regular ring around a tree or some small structure (a tiny reservoir, a gazebo, a fountain), look very nice.

Round island flower beds are placed in the middle of the lawn, narrow long ones - along the wall of a house or a pedestrian path, multi-level ones turn with rising steps towards the viewer. Oval, smoothly curved or irregularly broken polygons are suitable for large flat areas, but rectangular flower beds can level the landscape or emphasize terraces. Having decided on the place, you need to prepare the site. To do this, remove all unnecessary from it (stones, debris, bushes, grass), level it.

Video "Building a flower bed at a summer cottage"

An example of building a brick flower bed with your own hands in a few days.

What materials and tools will be needed

If you have already decided to make a brick flower garden in the country, then you will need this very brick, and not necessarily new and beautiful. Sometimes an old, second-hand brick, left after cleaning some structure, looks very impressive. What kind of brick to make - white or red - is up to the owner to decide, There are no wrong decisions, everything will look good, if you wish, you can paint it in any color.

In addition to brick, you will need cement and utensils for mixing it, sand and crushed stone for the base, a shovel, a trowel, a rope (or fishing line) and pegs for marking. You may need beautiful stones, shells, wooden elements that can decorate your work.Clay or wooden garden sculptures, stumps, old shoes scattered on the lawn, which can become magnificent pots for flowers or colorful grass, look very good in the country.

How is the layout of the flower bed

Construction work begins with the layout of the flower bed. Borders are marked right on the ground, pegs are driven in, a rope is pulled over them. A ditch 30 cm deep is dug out along the outlined contours for low walls - 4-5 bricks. The higher the wall, the deeper the moat should be. If a high stepped flower bed or pillars of bricks are supposed, then the base must be deepened at least 80 cm. The ditch should turn out with even sides, one brick wide.

At the bottom of the resulting ditch, we pour sand, at least 5 cm thick, then crushed stone, of the same thickness, and again sand. Having tamped all this, you can put the first layer of bricks on top. The sand-stone base will not only hold the walls, it will become an excellent drainage, excess water from the flower bed will freely go to the sides so that the roots do not rot.

For the same purpose, the first 2-3 layers of bricks are not connected with cement, they are simply laid on top of each other, and already the 4th layer is placed on cement.
Sometimes the walls of the flower bed, in general, are not fastened with cement, they are simply placed on top of each other - such a structure also has a right to exist, but it will not be durable. At the end of the laying, the structure is left for 4-5 days so that the cement finally sets and dries out.

Useful Tips

When the flowers grow, there is some movement of the soil, because of this, the flower bed can expand. To avoid trouble, when erecting the walls, they are slightly shifted inward (they are slightly wrapped like a pot), for this it is enough to press the bricks with your hands.
Before laying bricks, you need to outline the height; for this, high pegs are driven in and the rope is pulled again.

The horizontalness of the masonry must be constantly checked so as not to miss distortions - after all, the base is mobile, which means that there will be shifts and distortions, you just need to eliminate them in time.If columns are supposed, then work begins with them. For the columns, a hole is dug 1 m deep - they must be even and stable. Often pots with plants are placed on brick columns.

And for curved walls, you can use flexible plastic: first lay the plastic, and then lay bricks along it. At the end of the work, the plastic can be easily removed from the inside. For those who doubt their abilities, you can find a suitable video on the Internet, watch a master class, and only then start implementing your plan. There are people who have already gone this way, have enjoyed and are eager to share their experience.

The last stage of construction

When the cement in the brick walls grasps well and dries out, you can fill up the soil. It is not tamped, just poured, poured with water and left alone. It must stand at least two weeks before the flowers are planted. If the soil falls below the required level, it is filled up, but it is simply necessary to wait for the allotted time - it will settle down as needed, and it will be seen whether it is worth adding more or not.

Only after the expiration of 2 weeks, you can plant well-thought-out and prepared flowers, place individual pots or some decorative elements on the platforms, sides and columns. If you build 1 flower bed in the country yourself, then most likely you will not stop there. You will definitely want to do more and more, because there are many options that will look so good on your site.

Video "Forming the walls of a brick flower bed"

A simple way to build the foundation and walls of a brick flower bed, recommendations for self-formation of brickwork.