Sleepers, do or die

Railway sleepers! I have access to loads of them. But can I use them on an allotment?

Lots of people do, but you may be concerned about the preservatives they have been coated with in the past..............unless of course they are new uncoated ones...then lucky you

That is very true! The ones in our back garden were fine until warmer weather came along and they oozed black like tar. Like MoS says untreated one's are the best.

I have a couple of old sleepers that I reclaimed from my neighbour's garden when he was renovating.  I love them and would love to have more!  But they are just too expensive these days as everybody wants them to edge garden beds.

I saw a very attractive layout recently where they were stacked three high to make the edging, but offset like bricks and a gap between each sleeper.  Trailing plants were planted in the gaps.  Hard to explain - I wish I'd taken a photo.

Here's my best representation - where the Xs represent the sleepers and the gaps are planted.

XXXXX     XXXXX     XXXXX
       XXXXX     XXXXX     XXXXX
XXXXX     XXXXX     XXXXX

It was a big raised garden bed so used a lot of sleepers.  I don't know if they had been constructed using a long peg of some sort to hold them together, or if they were just stacked.

That's what I would do if I had lots of sleepers!

i tend agree with whats been said most ex railway sleepers have been dipped in one presumes a tar or creosote product that in  hot weather runs out i speak from some experience as my dad worked on BR for most of his working life and we used reclaimed sleepers on a lot of jobs 

mainly for chicken runs and fences gate post's and so on but never where plants where concerned  i would be very reluctant to use but everyone to there own

I'm in the camp which thinks that people should be better informed so they can take more individual responsibility for their actions and with their health (in other words I am often in mild despair about our current H&S culture, not to mention some of the legislation coming from the EU!)

Even so, it is hard to ignore the fact that in many cases old timber railway sleepers should be officially classed as hazardous waste.

I don't think you need to be an organic grower to decide that you don't want such material near your crops, although if I needed them and were given some I'd probably find it hard to resist using them after perhaps lining them with pond liner. 

I researched into this and you'd be surprised at the number of people who use the old sleepers with no bad effects.

It would of course take many years for the bad effects to show.

The tar/creosote treatment that usesd is a strong carcinogen - that doesn't matter when it's under a train but under your bottom or beside your veg is a different matter.  It is forbidden to use them in public gardens anymore.


Good article JayG !