After dealing with thirsty plants for years, one of our lovely customers Marion decided to build a wicking garden bed in her backyard in Geelong.

As you can see in the photos she sent in, they look like a regular garden bed apart from the tiny overflow hole in the right hand corner shown below that gives away the fact that they’re actually wicking beds.

What is a wicking garden bed?

Plants have the ability to draw water up into their roots through a phenomena called capillary action. So by putting a reservoir below the soil with a filling pipe and overflow outlet, you can get water under the soil where it’s drawn up, rather than having to constantly water down to the roots!!

How do you build one?

North Geelong Timber Supplies have all the materials you need. A garden bed can be built with virtually any material however our favourite is exactly what Marion has done, which is using a mixture of treated pine timber and corrugated iron sheets.

The key is sealing up the bottom and putting in a layer of scoria and then a textile filter layer to keep the soil from failing though and filling the gaps between the scoria, which make room for the water to sit in.

Here’s a great clip from Gardening Australia and a link to their page that runs through the full instructions on how to build a wicking garden bed in Geelong.