Practical Hugelkultur gardening from someone who has actually built the beds.

Welcome to HugelGuide

HugelGuide is dedicated to helping gardeners understand, build and grow with Hugelkultur.

Created by author and lifelong gardener James Paris, this site brings together practical Hugelkultur information based on years of experimenting with raised beds, logs, organic materials and no-dig gardening.

Whether you’re completely new to Hugelkultur or looking for ways to improve an existing Hugel bed, you’ll find practical guides, experiments, growing advice and resources here.

It can be as simple as using logs, branches, woody material, compost and good soil to create productive raised beds that make better use of the space you have.

That’s what HugelGuide is about.

Here you’ll find practical advice on how to build a hugelbed, what materials to use, hugelkultur raised beds, small-space hugelkultur, soil building, watering, planting and maintaining your beds — including the things that aren’t always mentioned in the usual hugelkultur guides.

I’m not interested in making hugelkultur sound more complicated than it is. My aim is to share what I’ve learned, what has worked, what hasn’t, and how you can adapt the basic principles of hugelkultur to your own garden.

Whether you’re thinking about building your first hugelbed, converting a raised bed to hugelkultur, or simply wondering whether hugelkultur really works, HugelGuide is here to help you give it a try.

Build it. Grow in it. Learn from it.