If you are very lucky when you move into your new home, the gardens will have been dug and will be to your liking. 

However, that usually isn’t the case.  Fortunately making a new garden bed is not that difficult.  The first step is to either draw your garden on a piece of paper, or to make a pleasing shape with a rope or hose where you want your new garden to be.

Next, grab a stack of newspapers.  Then, using your edger make a nice edge along the marked line.  Try to keep the edger in the ground, just bringing it up enough to move it along to cut the next part of the edge.  You’ll find that your edge will be much smoother than if you completely remove the edger from the soil to cut the next piece of lawn.

Once the edge has been cut, go back to where you began and remove the edges in hunks.  If you’re on sandy soil, you probably can just pull back on the edger and a piece will come out easily.  If you garden on clay, you’ll need to make another edge inside the first, so that you can remove the pieces of grass and soil more easily.

Now, put a single layer of newspaper over the grass, and toss the grassy pieces you’ve removed from the edge on top of the newspaper to hold it down.  Then, add soil (I like to use compost), to the depth of 15 cm (6″) on top of the newspaper and level it out. 

Over the next couple of weeks, the bed will sink slightly and the grass that has been covered by the newspaper will disappear.  Within a month or two, the newspaper will decompose as well.

The nice thing about this method of building a new garden bed, is that you can plant it up right away or wait for a week or two until it has settled. 

Once you’ve got an idea and a plan of where you want your new garden to be, all you need is an edger, some newspaper, good soil, a shovel and if you’re lucky a few good friends to help out.