Corrugated Metal Raised Planter

This is the raised bed for people who want to be planting by lunch. The wood part is just two end assemblies — 2x4 legs clad with short cedar picket boards — and the entire body of the planter is a piece of corrugated metal roofing screwed to them. The corrugations do the structural work a wall of lumber would normally do: that ribbed profile is why roofing panels can span rafters, and here it's why the sides don't need studs, rails, or a frame between the ends.

The listed panel is 26" x 36", but the design scales with the material: a 36"-wide panel makes a deeper bed, and longer panels make longer beds — the pickets and 2x4s don't care. Metal roofing is sold in standard widths at every farm store, usually cheaper per square foot than any wood you'd replace it with.

Two things the steps won't forgive you for skipping. First: cut metal edges are SHARP, and so are the corrugation ends. File or tape any edge that ends up near the soil line where hands will work, or hide the cut edges against the wood ends. Second: use actual roofing screws (the kind with bonded rubber washers) to attach the tin — plain screws through metal leave ragged holes that weep rust streaks down the panel after the first watering.

Line it with landscape fabric, fill, plant. Choose red-toned or treated 2x4s — the legs sit against damp soil and ground splash for their whole service life.