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.

We live where there are a lot of deer and wanted a small garden up on our deck. This was perfect. Went together easily; wasn’t too heavy to move. Slats in the bottom are open slightly for drainage. We used sticks in the very bottom, then coconut coir and peat moss for drainage with garden planter soil.

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.

I love these planter boxes! They're a good size, the construction seems sturdy, and they're beautiful! I water sealed the wood planks before I assembled them, and they seem to be holding up well. My only criticism are the instructions for assembly. the instructions were not very clear or easy to follow, but ultimately, we were able to assemble the boxes fine. Overall, still happy with my purchase!

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!!!

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.

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.

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.