I’m a great fan of “no dig” gardening, where garden beds are raised and then filled with layers of organic materials and soil. If nothing else, our earth at the front has turned out to be about 30% old building materials (tiles, slate, whole bricks, pipe, old iron).

There are many ways of creating a raised bed: railway sleepers, wood frames, bricks, hay bales. I decided to go for corrugated iron tanks, for two reasons: they were easy to install, and looked atractive.

Tankworks sells a wide range of garden beds, built to order.

I ordered two, 2m long, 1m wide, 1m deep, the same colourbond colour as our roof.

Some weeks later they arrived, and was I surprised. They were huge! 1m deep turned out to be totally impractical, so with the help of a friend with an angle grinder, they were cut in half.

The photo above is the first of the tanks installed at the top of the front garden (the sunniest spot). Still waiting for soil and cow manure to be delivered…

(And yes, there was still some serious mattock work to dig the trenches, generating a good pile of building rubble in the process. Still, a good break from sitting behind a PC all week!)