Bricks are too small and light weight to hold back soil and stay in place without mortar. You will need at least three rows high, since the bottom row should be partly under grade. Standard bricks are about three inches(7.62 cm) high (face) by seven inches long (7.6 x 17.78 cm), so it takes quite a few to get anywhere. Mortared brick will need a concrete footing, too. But, if you are installing a raised bed in front of a brick house, it is quite nice to match the house brick on the bed face for a more integrated appearance.
Stone
Stone, in one of its many forms, is my favorite material. It goes with any type of garden. Of course, unless you have them popping out of your property, stone is not inexpensive! Rubble stone is the least expensive and most difficult to use. A lot of it will be pure garbage and half of the rest will require some shaping so that the stones fit together tightly. You can buy stone that has natural flat faces or has been dressed; more expensive, but easier to work with.
Stone in relatively oblong shapes can be used as a single layer for edging a shallow raised bed. The stones need to be sunk into the grade a few inches to keep them from moving all over the map.
You can also use large rocks of almost any shape. A good deal of twiggling and fiddling will enable you to fit them together, more or less, and the gaps where they abut can be planted to good effect, as shown in this photo I took at the Philadelphia Flower Show this year.
Building a raised bed over one stone high is exactly the same process as building a stone wall, whether drystone or mortared stone. If you like the look of drystone, but want a bit more stability and less messing about trying to find the perfect fit between two stones, you can mortar the stones on the inside face, making sure that none of the mortar is visible from the front face.
However, dry laid stone is not difficult. It just requires futzing around with each stone to place it properly. Batter your edging back into the bed exactly as you'd do if you were building a retaining wall. Do this even if you're only going up three or four stones high.
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