Coogee, NSW

These self watering wicking planters made use of a hidden suntrap at the side of the house.

It can be challenging to set them up on such a slope, but the water reservoir beneath each is level, and can be filled with a hose. The highest bed overflows into the lower beds to allow a single fill point, and they only need watering a few weeks after rain.

The trellis will catch sun later into the year as it lowers in the sky, and allow climbing vegetables to be home grown, such as beans, snow peas, sweet potato, or fruit such as grapes and passionfruit.
The built in worm composters give a handy place to put scraps and offcuts whilst feeding the worms, which aerate the soil and dig the bed for you!

And because they water from below, the top is dry so there should be minimal issues with slugs, snails or fungal disease.

In the tightly packed gardens of Coogee and the Eastern Suburbs, space is usually the limiting factor, which is what makes a setup like this so useful. Tucking three raised beds into a slim side return and training crops up the trellis gets a good amount of growing area out of a footprint most people would overlook.

The same approach works well on the courtyards, terraces and rooftops common across Coogee, where a fully lined, self-watering raised vegetable bed can sit on a hard surface and still crop steadily through the salty coastal summers. Built from our durable, food-safe timber, these raised garden beds are made to last in an exposed seaside setting. UrbanVeg builds raised garden beds across Coogee and the Eastern Suburbs.