Hey Kristin,

I'm a noob when it comes to raised beds myself, but I can tell you that when the ground freezes, you will have frost heaval. This will crack the mortar in the joints of your brickwork if you don't pour a boot of foundation of some kind. Being in zone 8, I would bet that your frostline, the depth to which the ground freezes during winter, is very shallow. You would not need a massive foundation ring, I would bet that just 4-6 inches with 2 pieces of 1/4" rebar would do very nicely. It would be worth it in the long run, I think, becasue tearing down, cleaning and re-mortaring bricks is an ugly, hard and messy job. Brickwork that is cracked, that has shifted or is outright falling apart is ugly as well. Do it right the first time, you'll thank yourself every day when you DON'T have to re-do all your work. Keep in mind also, then once you have made anything involving brick or concrete, moving this later is a job so close to impossible, that it may as well be just that; impossible. Tearing this ind of stuff down is either very labor-intensive or costly. Be careful when you plan something so permenant.

Personally, if I had a whole bunch of vintage brick laying around, I would use them to lay around my raised bed made of wood, making an attractive border for the bed or even a small area to stand on while working around the bed.

Hope I helped :)

I've been entertaining similar thoughts. After 20 years my wood-framed beds are rotting and I'd like to use something different when we rebuild the garden later this year. Also live in an area where hard freezes are rare and generally brief.

If you are going to mortar between the bricks you'll need a bit of a footing or your mortar joints will simply crack apart and leave you worse off than dry stacked. For a couple of bricks high I have not had significant problems with shifting when dry stacked. Some spots I've had to straighten out a couple of times, but generally they stay put.

OK, so, I'll try out dry-stacking on a new bed I have this year and see how it goes. If I decide to mortar sometime in the future, it won't be such a big job, because in any new garden I build the rate at which beds get made will be dependent on the rate at which I collect organic material to fill them -- thus only one or two beds a year till I'm done. I just may pave in between them with bricks at some point, too.

Kristin