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We asked Annabelle Padwick from Life at No.27 to tell us her allotment story and how these community growing spaces can provide much more than just fresh vegetables. - - - Happy National Allotment Week! A whole week of officially celebrating a place that mentally saved me and helped me grow as a person. A [...]

Last week we headed down to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh to catch up with the team that runs the Edible Gardening Project, a scheme that is run purely by volunteers, and a couple of years back we supplied nine of our timber raised beds which have been utilised to grow an abundance of [...]

The school summer holidays are here and anyone with children or grandchildren will welcome ideas to keep them entertained without spending a small fortune. We’ve put together five ideas that will keep youngsters entertained and help them to learn about plants, insects and gardening. Build an insect house Insect houses can be built out of [...]

On 22nd July the first ever Garden Fest took place just down the road from the WoodBlocX HQ at Inverness Botanic Gardens. We sponsored and attended the event bringing some unique WoodBlocX fun for young gardeners to get involved in! We challenged youngsters attending the event to a build-off using Lego to create something totally [...]

Our modular system is ideal for building retaining walls, making it a great alternative to bricks, stone and railway sleepers. Here we explain why…   Why use WoodBlocX for retaining walls? Whether your garden is sloping or hilly, landscaping areas using WoodBlocX is cost effective and the finished article is safe, sturdy, durable and looks [...]

With so many distractions in our lives these days, time is one thing we all wish we had a little more of. At WoodBlocX our aim is to help you save time, so you’ve got more of it to spend doing the things you love. We make ordering, delivering and building our products as quick and [...]

We have not been fortunate to get down to RHS Hampton Court this year but that hasn’t stopped us checking out the gardens. There’s some real crackers and although most of us won’t be able to reach the award-winning standard of these plots, there’s plenty of inspiration to be drawn from them. Here’s our top [...]

Raised beds not only need to look good in the garden, be durable and long lasting, they also need to be convenient, therefore selecting the right height to suit you is one of the most important considerations. Here’s our recommendations... Low-Level Some people use our raised beds to divide up the growing space in their gardens [...]

When the summer weather is good we tend to spend a lot of time outside in our gardens. Whatever the size or shape, they act as an extension to our living space and it's important to make the most of it. There are lots of options for garden furniture; from metal to plastic, but naturally [...]

Let us do the hard work for you with our FREE GARDEN DESIGN service. We mention our Free Garden Design service a lot. It is something we are really proud of and the designs and feedback we receive from our customers speak volumes Sometimes the thought of undertaking a big project in the garden can be [...]

The weather has been spot-on recently and for most of the UK the upcoming Spring Bank Holiday weekend is looking sunny and warm.   If the coverage of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show has got your creative-garden-juices flowing and if you, like many others, prefer to dodge the crowds during the bank holiday and stay [...]

Let the RHS Chelsea Flower Show inspire your next garden update With the RHS Chelsea Flower show opening its doors to the public next week, we wanted to give our blog readers some Chelsea-inspired garden ideas.   Over the years we have created our own exhibitions and contributed to many others. We’ve had the pleasure [...]

Does your school garden need a makeover or are you keen to introduce pupils to gardening and growing plants and vegetables? Need a boost to get your project moving? We have just the thing… We are working with fundraising platform Ralloo to give five primary schools the opportunity to receive a WoodBlocX raised bed worth £500 [...]

Landscaping: a word that has many negative connotations including cowboy gardeners and boring municipal plantings, but which really only means to create a planted area. There are two types – soft landscaping is the planting part, and hard landscaping is the creation of patios, paths and beds, and which usually comes first in the process. [...]

In 2016 Glenn and Zoe Crockford appeared on the BBC's ‘Big Dreams   Small Spaces’ television programme with Monty Don. The couple opted to use our modular system throughout their redesign; see how they transformed their garden and how they found using WoodBlocX for their project.   Tell us about your garden before its transformation When [...]

WoodBlocX structures are renowned for looking good and are ideal to use in place of railway sleepers, wooden boards and even bricks. Looks aside, one of the main benefits that our customers find is our structures are really easy to build, enabling them to update their gardens quickly without having to spend hours with complicated [...]

Now that the cold snap behind us and spring is on its way (we hope!), its time to start looking ahead to the growing season. March is the month to make a start on sowing seeds, if it is mild enough where you are you can get to work sowing certain veg directly into the [...]

We’re often referred to as the company that offers raised beds, and rightly so, as it’s our speciality. However, the beauty of WoodBlocX is that our unique modular system can be adapted and transformed into lots of different structures for the garden. Here are just a few examples of what we’ve helped our customers to [...]

Our raised beds are really easy to build because everything you need is included in your kit. All of the wooden components are cut to size so there’s no need to saw the wood and there’s no waste. The components are lightweight making them easy to move them from one side of the garden to [...]

Successfully updating your garden is all in the planning and February is the ideal month to lay down plans in readiness for spring. we've put a quick guide together to get you started... Time Realistically how much time can you put into your garden? Spring, summer and autumn are the busiest times, early spring is [...]

Ensure your raised beds are ready and raring to go for spring by boosting the health of the soil. Good quality soil will help increase the crop yield of vegetables and promote healthier blooms in flowers; plus, the better soil structure builds up resilience to pests and disease. There are lots of composts and additives available and [...]

It’s January, the weather is gloomy and there’s not a great deal going on out in the garden; but don’t let that stop you being productive! Here are four easy to grow and useful veg that can be sown between now and the end of February, either directly in your raised bed or indoors. Garlic [...]

Our design team thrives on creating bespoke solutions for challenging projects to create long-lasting and maintenance free structures for the garden. Here’s a few of our favourites from 2017. Ryan’s Garden Ryan’s terraced back garden was in need of a facelift, so he wanted to improve it with a retaining wall. An outrageous quote from [...]

In the south, there have been very few really hard frosts, so even some tender bedding plants like geraniums have survived and it means that many of the bugs and other nasties are also thriving! So now is the time to go slug and snail hunting and dispose of them! Really we do need a [...]

Do you need to spruce up your garden fast? Perhaps you need to make some improvements before a big event? Or do you just want to add some finishing touches to a garden without the hassle of too much work? Plants are by far the easiest and best way to bring a bit of life [...]

All too often a great design idea has to be amended beyond recognition because of the practicalities and realities of the garden and the budget. Perhaps all the materials for the garden have to be taken through the house, perhaps there are pets or young children around, or perhaps you’re on a deadline – all [...]

When you are building a garden project it’s reassuring to know that it will last for a good number of years, and that’s where using materials from a specific supplier is useful. Whereas it might be difficult to estimate the lifespan of a raised bed or other construction made from timber planking or recycled sleepers, [...]

When it comes to retaining walls and terracing, safety and durability are the main concerns. Construction in stone may be the obvious first choice, but it is expensive, especially once the cost of the builders has been factored in. The cheapest option is timber boards, but these will warp and distort over time. They’re also often impregnated with [...]

Are you struggling with a design for a difficult area of your garden or do you just need something a little out of the ordinary? Have you considered using a modular timber system such as WoodBlocX? Other options in these situations – such as old railway sleepers – could struggle with the dimensions that your ideas [...]

There are a whole range of remarkably cold hardy oriental greens. They are ideal to keep your plot going through the depths of winter, particularly if you don't have the space or time for traditional winter veg like brussels. Many are good both in salads and cooked - try Pak Choi, Mizuna, Chinese Cabbage, Mibuna, [...]

Whether you are just putting in a couple of beds for a vegetable garden or terracing the whole garden, it’s always good to be able to see all the costs of a project up front. Using a modular timber system for raised beds and other landscaping means that the material costs are really easy to calculate, and [...]

Sometimes less is more, so whether you have an allotment, a large kitchen garden or just a single raised bed, you should use successional sowing to ensure a steady, regular and appropriate supply of vegetables throughout the growing season, rather than experiencing a glut all at once. Basically, using the principle of little and often, it [...]

We are really proud to be involved with Macmillan Cancer Support and the Move More Edinburgh Project, by supplying the new WoodBlocX Raised Beds at the Botanic Gardens for the group to use. Move More Edinburgh is a programme to help and encourage people affected by cancer to get moving. With various activities including gentle movement classes, [...]

We were delighted to help RHS Young Designer of the Year Caitlin McLaughlin with her creation of the new Copella Garden, which was first shown at the RHS Malvern show earlier this summer. Copella is a British fruit juice company based in Boxford, Suffolk. The orchards were founded in the 1930s and the company have [...]

A new garden design – or a new determination to transform your garden – can be a daunting prospect. Caitlin McLaughlin, the RHS Young Designer of the Year 2016, gives us her take on what makes a successful garden design in the above video. Below are some tips on things to consider when preparing to [...]

This years RHS Chelsea was bigger and better than any of the previous shows. It was home to eight Show Gardens, five Fresh Gardens, nine Artisan Gardens and more than 100 floral displays. Artisan Garden highlights included the 2016 winner of Best Fresh Garden, Gary Breeze, who designed a garden which features the replica of [...]

The Creeping Buttercup is a low growing perennial weed which prefers wet heavy soils. Creeping Buttercups spread with vigorous creeping stems that run along the ground rooting at intervals with a very fibrous rooting system.   You need to make sure you remove all the fibrous roots as well as the main part of the [...]

When we spend so much time helping our carrots, cauliflowers and cucumbers to grow it would be a real waste to let the pigeons get in there for the first bite!   Crop protectors allow you to defend your veg against invaders, but make sure you choose a net that matches your needs.

Ground Elder can be a real pest, and a tricky one to get rid of when it takes hold of your vegetable patch. But if you follow these quick tips you should be able to banish it from your garden in no time.   The key thing is to make sure you pull out the [...]

Step back in time with Brick Dinos! Enter the Jurassic period like never before and meet the dinosaurs face to face, each one masterfully built using LEGO® bricks. Working in close collaboration with a paleontologist, lego artists have painstakingly recreated some of the largest beasts to ever walk this earth in miniature LEGO form! Come [...]

  There's a lot that goes into designing a dream garden, so to help get your creative juices flowing we have compiled a list of our top favourite designers for inspiration, and you can watch how Rick McKeever from Lovania Nurseries used WoodBlocX to build his award-winning garden in the above video. One thing before you start [...]

It was a great pleasure for us at WoodBlocX to recently work with the wonderfully talented Jekka McVicar on another garden project. This time the focus was on Health and Wellbeing, and the design incorporated a number of curved sections as well as a central seating area. The garden forms the focus point of the new Live Well Zone at the [...]

  Plants don’t get much more productive than French beans. The beans hang so heavy on the plants you’d think the stems would collapse, giving you a plentiful harvest from minimal space in your raised vegetable beds. They are also very attractive, offering various flower and bean colours, so you could even incorporate them into your ornamental [...]

  Most people who grow their own food will tell you that it is that strawberries – or sometimes tomatoes – are the ‘epiphany’ plants. Once you’ve tasted a home-grown fruit, plucked from the plant at perfect ripeness, warmed by the sun so its natural sugars are at their peak….there is no going back. And [...]

  A seed in an embryonic plant waiting to get out. It's the pleasurable task of the gardener to turn the seed from dormancy into a living thing by providing warmth, light, air and moisture. Seeds even have their own food supply to start them off, at least until they can put down roots and [...]

  WoodBlocX is a unique product that enables you to create and build almost any structure you could wish for in your garden. It’s just like giant Lego for your outside spaces. Woodblocx is easy to use, attractive, strong and durable. The individual BlocX, made from sustainably-sourced wood, are light and easy to handle, and fit [...]

Our friend Mark Abbott-Compton over at www.learn-how-to-garden.com has put together this great tutorial on how to build your very own Hot Bed using a WoodBlocX Raised Bed. It's a technique that the Victorians popularised throughout the UK many years ago, but is just as effective today! Used since Roman times with a cold frame on top, Hot [...]

  Salad leaves are one of the crops that really do benefit from being home grown. No longer do you need to put up with supermarket salad bags that always seem to have a few soggy, smelly leaves in the bottom, you can pick fresh salad get it almost instantly onto the plate as and [...]

  If you’ve ever despaired at your children’s lack of interest in eating fruit and vegetables, why not try growing some with them? Following the whole process from sowing the seed to harvesting the crop, and then cooking it together, can really make children invest in their labours – they’ll want to taste what they’ve [...]

We all know that our country’s wildlife is getting increasingly put-upon by growing urbanisation and commercial agriculture. So what can we do to help? Well, there are a number of very simple and easy steps to take that will not only lend a hand to the wildlife, but also bring some excitement to our gardens [...]

Ponds are a fantastic addition to a garden, whatever its size, and not as difficult to create as you might think.  Water in a garden has an enormous value to wildlife – bugs such as pond skaters and water boatmen live in the water, birds can drink and bathe in it, and amphibians such as [...]

You may have heard gardeners talking about the ‘right plant right place’ principle, but what does it actually mean? In essence, it refers to working with Mother Nature rather than against her. By looking to a plant’s origins – where in the world it is from, the kind of environment it has evolved to grow [...]

Watering is gardening’s most basic task, in every sense of the word. It’s always needed at some point, no matter what the garden. Watering is really a very simple task, however so often it is under-watering or over-watering that can cause our plants to suffer and even die. All plants need water, even the drought [...]

Growing in your own garden means you have total control over what goes into your plants, and many gardeners are opting to have an organic garden, at least for their edible plants. Organic gardening means to grow without the use of chemicals but can be interpreted in different ways depending on how strict you want [...]

Growing your own vegetables, herbs and fruit is becoming increasingly popular, and it’s easy to get in on the action. In a few short months – weeks even – you can be picking your first harvests straight from the garden. The first thing to decide is what you want to grow – there is no [...]

Did you watch the first episode of the new series of ‘Big Dreams Small Spaces’? If you did, you’d have been treated to loads of beautiful shots of WoodBlocX being used in Glenn and Zoe’s garden transformation project! Monty Don was on hand to help the couple revitalise the awkwardly shaped green space into something [...]

Are you struggling with a design for a difficult area of your garden? Or do you need something a little out of the ordinary? Have you considered using a modular timber system such as WoodBlocX? Other options in these situations – such as old railway sleepers – could struggle with the required dimensions. Modular systems [...]

Yes, your WoodBlocX raised beds can indeed still be productive, even though British summer time is well and truly over and growing is now at a slower pace. As we reach the darker days of winter, it is still possible to enjoy an array of vegetables, such as salads with some planning and a little care! The beauty [...]

When you’re looking for a British company that has form and pedigree, they don’t come much better than WoodBlocX. Based at the Munro Sawmills in Dingwall in the Highlands of Scotland, WoodBlocX is a division of a family business that started more than 120 years ago. A pioneering woman called Elsie Smith opened a timber [...]

When considering the options for your garden building project – whether it be raised beds, planters, benches or more, timber is often at the top of the list. It’s a natural product, relatively easy to use and cheap. Boards and planking can warp and bow over time however and cannot be guaranteed to be strong or durable enough, so [...]

It’s good to know that when you buy a product it is not just from an environmentally-friendly company, but that the good ethics are present all the way back down the supply chain to where that company sources its materials. When buying timber for a garden project it can sometimes be difficult to be sure [...]

If you are still in the process of last minute Christmas shopping, why not give the gardener in your life some WoodBlocX as a unique and useful gift that will get them started on that raised bed or planter which they have always planned on building? WoodBlocX can be despatched within three days of ordering [...]

  Long and thin, short and stumpy or round; orange, purple, white, yellow and red: there’s more to carrots than the basic orange ones that fill the bags in the supermarket. Growing your own means you can access this wide variety of shapes, colours and tastes, and also means you are able to eat them [...]

Raised beds are the ideal solution to many garden situations. Most obviously, they provide a place to grow in courtyards and other paved or concreted areas where there is no available open ground. However, they can also be used to grow in areas of bad soil – where it is boggy or stony for example. By [...]

  In a WoodBlocX construction – from a raised bed to a retaining wall - the capping and the BlocX beneath it both have a joint at the corners, and these corner joins are susceptible to opening slightly over a period of time and leaving a small gap in the corner capping. The steel L-plates devised by WoodBlocX solve this problem [...]

Forget that saw when you have one of these little beauties dowels are no match. Get the perfect cut every time by following these simple steps. Remember to chop off the dowels on the third notch down so you can get the capping to fit.

  Although WoodBlocX are really simple to put together, they can be used to build strong and long lasting structures for both private gardens and communal areas. Once installed, they are also super-easy to maintain. The building instructions cannot be easier. First of all make sure your BlocX are the correct way up with the big hole [...]

If you’ve ever despaired at your children’s lack of interest in eating fruit and vegetables, why not try growing some with them? Following the whole process of sowing the seed to harvesting the crop, and then cooking it together, can really make children invest in their labours – they’ll want to try what they’ve spent [...]

Sean has been preparing his perfect gardening space for years and we had the opportunity to help him by installing some of our raised beds. Our video will give you an idea as to how versatile and cost-effective our WoodBlocX can be.

A new garden – or a new determination to transform the garden – can be a daunting prospect. There are two possible approaches: do it all at once, or do it bit by bit. Doing it all at once, if you can afford to do so, is obviously an attractive proposition. You get the garden [...]

It’s that time of year again, the weather is warming up, the flowers are starting to bloom and the RHS Chelsea Flower Show opens its gates to showcase the best of the world’s garden design talent. Whilst we’re not exhibiting this year, WoodBlocX has been included in The Sun newspaper’s Flower Square Garden, which is [...]