Gardener's Supply Company Elevated Cedar Raised Garden Bed | 2' x 8' Heavy Duty Standing Planter Box with Aluminum Corners for Outdoor Plants Vegetables Flowers | Perfect for Patio & Backyard

I suggest that you read other reviews. The best suggestions are to read through the directions and use a drill to make small pilot holes into the wood as you go so the screws go in easier also with a drill base and a Phillips head. The shorter end pieces of cedar come with the aluminum stave and L-bracket already attached. The hardware for the longer sides are not pre-attached. As the aluminum L-bracket on the long sides of the planter will have to rest on top of the pre-attached L-brackets for the shorter end pieces, I found that I had to drill a new larger hole through the pieces of aluminum on the first side and reattach to properly fit with the end pieces. The rest was easy. It's very sturdy. I used Thompson's to seal the cedar. It looks great as well.

My daughter has wanted a garden for so long, since our neighbor, whom we pass every day walking home from the bus stop, has a lovey one. So thought this might be a good start for us to see how much she will like it. And a great outdoor activity we can do together. She said it was her favorite gift this Christmas. And I loved how it wasn't that hard to put together and turned out to be so durable and beautiful - like the pictures. Excited for spring!!!

First off this is whole boards, not pressed and glued pieces. So big plus. But it was a bit expensive for what your get. Gardener's supply is like that. Stuff is usually expensive but good. Just depends on the individual product whether it is more on the scale of way too expensive vs it is so good that it is worth the extra price. This is mostly worth the price, would have been better a bit lower price. Assembly wasn't totally seamless. I didn't have to end up drilling pilot holes for all screws like some other cheaper brands. But you do need to line things up with particular offsets. (The top of the boards are offset a bit from the supports.) Even with double checking everything and remeasuring once done (and my offsets were within reasonable variation of true), I did have to use a drill to expand a couple holes on the aluminum frame to get things to fit. And then not perfectly square. But with the slope I was installing them on for final form of it worked ok for me. As a last note research your soil for it! You shouldn't use standard in ground garden soil. However recommended raised bed soil is significantly more expensive. If you look up what is the difference between that and the raised bed soil, the main thing is a healthy dose of peat moss. With a bit of research I was able to recreate the raised bed soil more cheaply using garden soil (cheap), peat moss (a bit more $ but less than using the dedicated soil), and my compost (free). Everything is growing well in my custom mixture.

My husband and I bought two of these. They arrived promptly, and were very well packaged. The wood is excellent quality, thick, well planed and clean. The side supports are very sturdy, metal. There is nothing cheap or flimsy about the materials in this package. The directions are straight forward, and if you take care to read them through before you start, you won't have any problems. I would offer these few suggestions to make your assembly go easier: First, build it on a work bench. Next, I strongly suggest drilling pilot holes for the screws, especially if there happens to be a knot in the wood where the screws should go. If you do that, then assembly is a breeze. Next, have a drill bit that can go through metal handy, in case you need to ream the holes on the final L-Bracket to make them align. (That was our only problem, and it was our fault for not seating the sides fully into the channels.) The first box took us a couple of hours to build, but when we came to the second one, we applied lessons learned, and had it built in about 20 minutes. Gardener's Supply helpfully supplies a good amount of extra screws, as well. The garden box is super sturdy, and will be just the right height for a stand-up garden. I can't wait to plant.

I have the raised bed on my deck and it has produced a plentiful crop of lettuce. Tomatoes and peppers are growing well. I would recommend getting cages that work well with the raised bed. I didn’t at first and then went back and bought them to carefully hold up the tomatoes and peppers. Assembly was easy although we did place extra screws on the cross bars as some pulled out when we tested them. As I was placing this on my deck I used the plastic furniture movers under the legs. First, I didn’t want the weight of the bed to damage my Trex deck and if I have to move it they are permanently on the feet. Cheap precaution. I would recommend using a staple gun to secure the lining as you fill it with potting soil; otherwise it flops around making it difficult to hold the lining tight while placing the potting soil. I would recommend stapling as you add the soil...do not staple the entire lining in before you add the potting soil because you need to allow the lining to “give” as you are adding soil. I followed the instructions carefully and purchased the exterior vegetable safe oil that is sold with the raised bed. I coated the bed and the wood slats 2x very well to ensure a good penetration. This garden bed was not cheap and I did everything to help ensure it last for years to come.

Overall product is of decent quality. My grippe with the product is the assembly. Assembly should have taken 30 minutes but took closer to 2hrs due to poor preassembly. Most of the pre drilled screw holes didn't line up and turned this into a project. In the end it got done though one corner couldn't be screwed together using the pre drilled holes at all and had to be jimmied a different way. Overall, it's sturdy but the assembly really was a pain when it should have been simple. I also feel like the company was aware of this as they provided way more screws than were required and even after stripping 4 screws and using a few extra for the corner that didn't line up I still had a ton of screws left. As I said though, in the end, it's square, solid and looks good but just wasn't preassembled well at all.

2 years old now & still solid. No rust either. Deep for roots too.

Really nice looking raised bed with real cedar wood that’s sturdy and well crafted. I took the time to treat the cedar with a food safe varnish to keep the cedar looking new. I also took the time to pre-drill every screw hole to reduce the risk of splitting the cedar. We aren’t avid gardeners but will start with a little spinach and lettuce in this bed.