Raised Bed for Wet Backyard

I did this project because I was interested in raising some food where I live this summer. I am staying with friends in downtown Ithaca, NY, and wanted to work their backyard into a bit of a garden. I needed some good soil to work with and also had to deal with some very wet issues that arise late winter in this flatland old marsh area of downtown Ithaca. The soil is rich, but saturated a lot of the time.

I thought a raised bed solution would tackle a few things at once:

1) create a soft, high loamy mound to plant into that is layers of hay and soil excavated from ditches.

2) deal with wet foot problem for new plants by giving water a place to escape.

3) create a tight garden that uses as much of the space as efficiently as possible. The overall project only ended up taking roughly 8' x 7' and will have a lot of areas for plant growth.

I think the pictures explain themselves and have added a lot of notes to them. I will plan to add more when snows melt and I get my new plants into these mounds and get started! I plan on doing onions, garlic, herbs, tomatoes, squash, berries and other misc. within a few months!