You can even step your beds by putting one bottomless box on top of another, with the top one set back from the bottom one. Your bottom box dimensions would be the depth of both steps by the length of both steps.
Edging Your Bed
Wood In Various Forms
If you have even rudimentary carpentry skills, wood is just about the easiest and most economical material to use to edge raised beds. For contact with earth, it really needs to be treated or it will rot in a few years and you'll get to do it all over again. Pressure Treated Lumber is a controversial material; the topic of many a thread on most gardening lists on the net. Particularly for ornamental plantings, there is no reason not to use it, and many reasons why you should, if you want to build with wood. Treated lumber comes in a range of sizes suitable for most any project. It's heavy and generally full of knots and checks, but for edging beds it works fine. If you don't like the rather greenish color, you can stain or paint it, but you need to wait until it's weathered for about six months or the coatings won't adhere properly.
If you want a curved bed, 1 x treated lumber can be kerfed, wetted and bent. Kerfing is making saw cuts about half way through the board. A cut about every three inches (7.62 cm) or so will do fine for a gentle curve, but you can make them as close as a half an inch (1.27 cm) apart, if you're careful. Wet the boards after kerfing to aid in bending them. If your curve is tight, bend gradually, rewetting as you tighten the curve so they don't split. You can actually take bender board and do this without the kerfing, if you can find the bender board. Drive 2 x 2 pointed treated stakes into the ground at least a foot (0.45 cm) and nail or screw your board to them to hold it in place. Depending on your curve, you will probably need a stake about every three feet (1 m); closer if the curve is tighter, since you want to make sure you have enough stakes to hold the shape of the curve.
You can also use boards for straight edges and deep beds by nailing them to pointed stakes pounded into the ground - or, if you really want something sturdy, sink posts in concrete and nail or screw the boards to them. If your bed is less than a eighteen inches (0.45 m) high, a stake every five feet (1.52 m) should be sufficient. For higher beds, stake spacing should be three feet (1 m) on center, minimum. Anything over three feet (1 m) tall will need at least four inch by four inch (10 x 10 cm) posts instead of stakes, preferably set in concrete.
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