For a first bed, buy coated steel at 17 inches tall, in a footprint no wider than 4 feet. It will outlast cedar by decades, it needs no maintenance, and 17 inches is deep enough for every common vegetable without doubling what you spend on soil. Cedar is the right answer only when the bed has to look good from the kitchen window, and fabric is the right answer when you rent, when you are on a patio, or when you are not yet sure the spot gets enough sun.
The part nobody warns beginners about is that the bed is the cheap half of this project. Filling it usually costs more than the bed itself, and the difference between buying soil in bags and buying it by the cubic yard is large enough to change which bed you should buy. That arithmetic is below, and it is worth doing before you order anything.
| Pick | Best for | Price | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vego Garden 17 inch Tall Modular Metal Raised Garden Bed Best overall | A first permanent bed you will not replace | $$$ | Check price |
| Vegega 17 inch Metal Raised Garden Bed Best metal value | Two or three beds on one budget | $$ | Check price |
| Greenes Fence Cedar Raised Garden Bed Best cedar | A bed that has to look right in a front yard | $$ | Check price |
| Birdies Garden Beds Tall Metal Raised Bed Best tall bed | Gardeners who do not want to kneel | $$$ | Check price |
| Smart Pots Big Bag Bed Cheapest start | Renters, patios, and testing a spot before you commit | $ | Check price |
| Gardener's Supply Company Elevated Cedar Planter Box Best on legs | Balconies, decks, and gardening without bending | $$$ | Check price |
Price tiers are relative to each other, not actual prices. Check current listings, since raised bed pricing moves with steel and lumber.
Material, honestly
Coated steel
Almost every metal bed sold now uses steel with a zinc and aluminum coating, the same family of material used for roofing and siding, which is why it sits outdoors for decades without rusting through. It does not rot, warp, need staining, or house slugs in its joints. Assembly is bolts and a supplied tool, and the panels are usually modular, so one kit can become a long narrow bed or a square.
The two real drawbacks are price and heat. Price you can see on the listing. Heat is covered further down, and it matters in some zones and not others.
Cedar
Cedar is beautiful, smells right, and stays cool. It is also a consumable. Wood in permanent contact with damp soil rots, and cedar buys you years rather than immunity. Expect it to grey in the first season, and expect the long sides of a full bed to bow outward unless there is a cross brace at the midpoint.
Buy cedar when the bed is part of the look of your yard, or when you want to stack boards to a custom height. Do not buy it expecting to never think about it again.
Avoid untreated pine in soil contact, which often fails within a few seasons. Modern pressure treated lumber no longer uses arsenic compounds and is widely considered acceptable for garden beds, but plenty of gardeners still prefer not to, and that is a reasonable personal call rather than a scientific one.
Fabric
Fabric beds are the cheapest way to have a real bed this season. Roots air prune when they reach the fabric wall, which gives dense fibrous root balls instead of circling ones, and the whole thing folds away in autumn.
They also dry out faster than anything else here, because water leaves through every surface rather than just the top. In a hot, dry summer that means watering more often, and in a windy site it means noticeably more. Sun degrades the fabric over several seasons.
Height, and why 17 inches keeps appearing
Bed height is a compromise between root depth, water holding, back strain, and the price of soil, and 17 inches sits near the best point on all four.
At around 11 inches, which is what a single cedar board gives you, you have enough for lettuce, brassicas, beans and bush crops, provided the native soil underneath is not compacted. Roots will go below the frame if you let them.
At 17 inches, carrots, parsnips, beets and potatoes all have room without reaching into whatever is underneath, and the larger soil volume buffers moisture through a hot week. This is also roughly where a bed stops needing you to kneel all the way down.
At around 30 inches, you can garden standing up and never bend, which keeps some people in the hobby who would otherwise leave it. The cost is soil: the same footprint takes roughly twice the volume of a 17 inch bed.
How much soil, and what it costs
Volume is length times width times depth, in feet. A cubic yard is 27 cubic feet, and the common bagged sizes are 1.5 and 2 cubic feet.
| Bed size (feet) | Depth | Cubic feet | Cubic yards | Bags at 1.5 cu ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 x 4 | 17 inches | 11.3 | 0.42 | 8 |
| 4 x 4 | 17 inches | 22.7 | 0.84 | 15 |
| 3 x 6 | 17 inches | 25.5 | 0.94 | 17 |
| 4 x 8 | 11 inches | 29.3 | 1.09 | 20 |
| 4 x 8 | 17 inches | 45.3 | 1.68 | 30 |
| 4 x 8 | 30 inches | 80.0 | 2.96 | 53 |
Thirty bags for one 4 by 8 bed is the number that surprises people. Bagged soil is priced per bag and bulk soil is priced per cubic yard, and one cubic yard is 18 bags of the 1.5 cubic foot size, so the per volume gap between the two is usually large. If you need more than about a cubic yard, price a bulk delivery from a local landscape supplier before you fill a cart.
Two ways to cut the bill honestly. First, fill the bottom third of a deep bed with coarse organic material: branches, logs, sod flipped upside down, chopped leaves. It settles, it feeds the bed for years, and nothing you grow will notice, as long as the top foot is real soil. Second, aim for a blend rather than pure compost, which is typically something like half topsoil, a third compost, and the rest something for drainage. Pure compost shrinks dramatically and can run too rich for root crops.
Expect the level to drop over the first season. Top up with an inch or two of compost each spring and stop digging the bed over, and it will improve every year.
Where dark metal beds actually run hot
This is the one climate dependent decision in the whole purchase, so find your zone first.
Enter your US ZIP code for your USDA zone, frost dates & planting calendar.
In zone 7a and warmer, a dark sun facing steel wall does warm the soil against it on a summer afternoon. The effect falls off quickly with distance, so the middle of a 4 foot bed is not affected in any way you can measure, but the outer inch or two on the hot side is, and shallow rooted crops planted tight against that wall can suffer in July and August.
The fixes are ordinary. Mulch the surface, which you should be doing anyway. Orient a long bed so that the short end takes the worst afternoon exposure. Plant the sun facing edge with something you harvest early, and keep lettuce and other shallow salad crops toward the middle or on the shaded side in high summer. Choose a lighter color if the range offers one.
In zone 6 and colder the same property is an asset. Metal beds warm earlier in spring than the surrounding ground, which pulls your first planting forward by a week or two, and they drain and dry sooner after snowmelt. The same goes for the fall shoulder, where a warmer bed keeps growth going a little longer. The fall planting calendar by zone is the schedule that benefits from those extra days.
The picks
Vego Garden 17 inch Tall Modular Metal Raised Garden Bed
Best for: A first permanent bed you will not replace
Coated steel panels that bolt into several different footprints, at the height that suits the widest range of crops. It goes together in an afternoon with the supplied tool and then stops being something you think about.
Pros
- Modular panels let one kit become a rectangle, an L, or a narrow strip
- Coated steel does not rot, warp or need staining
- Seventeen inch height suits root crops without doubling the soil bill
Cons
- The most expensive way to enclose a given area
- Panel edges are sharp during assembly, so wear gloves
- Sun facing walls warm the outer soil in hot climates
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Vegega 17 inch Metal Raised Garden Bed
Best for: Two or three beds on one budget
The same coated steel format for meaningfully less per bed, which is what matters when you want a row of them rather than one showpiece. Build quality is a step below the premium brands and several steps above thin galvanized stock tanks.
Pros
- Costs less per square foot than the premium metal brands
- Multiple footprints and heights in one range
- No rot, no stain, no annual maintenance
Cons
- Thinner panels flex more during assembly
- Corner hardware is fiddlier
- Colors fade somewhat in full sun over years
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Greenes Fence Cedar Raised Garden Bed
Best for: A bed that has to look right in a front yard
Dovetailed cedar boards that slot together without tools and stack if you want more height. Cedar is the material people actually want when the bed is visible from the house, and this is the version that does not require a saw.
Pros
- Assembles without tools or hardware
- Stackable, so you can start at 11 inches and add height later
- Cedar weathers to grey rather than rotting quickly
Cons
- Wood in soil contact is a consumable, not permanent
- Boards can bow outward once the bed is full and wet
- Costs more per year of service than coated steel
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Birdies Garden Beds Tall Metal Raised Bed
Best for: Gardeners who do not want to kneel
The deep option, for anyone with a bad back or knees, or growing long rooted crops in shallow native soil. You pay for it twice, once for the bed and again for the soil to fill it.
Pros
- Working height removes most of the kneeling
- Deep root run for parsnips, carrots and potatoes
- Heavier gauge steel than most budget beds
Cons
- Needs roughly double the soil of a 17 inch bed of the same footprint
- Dries out faster at the surface
- Awkward to reach the middle if you buy it wider than 4 feet
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Smart Pots Big Bag Bed
Best for: Renters, patios, and testing a spot before you commit
A fabric bed that unrolls, gets filled, and grows a full season of vegetables, then folds away in autumn. It is the only option here you can move after you discover the spot gets four hours of sun instead of eight.
Pros
- Costs a fraction of any rigid bed
- Air pruning through the fabric gives dense, fibrous roots
- Folds flat for storage and moves when you move
Cons
- Dries out faster than any rigid bed, so watering is more frequent
- Fabric breaks down after several seasons in strong sun
- Looks like what it is
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Gardener's Supply Company Elevated Cedar Planter Box
Best for: Balconies, decks, and gardening without bending
A waist high box on legs, which is a different product from a raised bed even though the categories get mixed up. It holds a shallow volume of soil at a comfortable height, and that trade is the whole point.
Pros
- No bending at all, which keeps people gardening
- Works on a hard surface with no soil underneath
- Small soil volume is cheap to fill
Cons
- Shallow depth rules out most root crops
- Needs watering almost daily in summer
- Costs a lot for the growing area you get
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When not to buy a raised bed
If your native soil is decent and drains, you do not need one. A raised bed solves compaction, poor drainage, contaminated ground, hard clay, tree roots, and bending. It does not make plants grow better than good ground does, and in a dry climate it dries out faster than the ground it sits on.
If you have not watched the site for a season, wait, or start with a fabric bed you can move. Sun is the one variable you cannot fix later, and six to eight hours is what most vegetables want. Building a permanent bed in a spot that turns out to get four hours is the most expensive mistake in this category.
If you are buying more than two beds at once, buy one. Almost everyone overestimates how much garden they will keep up with in July. One well tended 4 by 8 bed produces more food than three neglected ones, and you can always add the second next spring.
And if you are still deciding what to grow in it, the ZIP lookup on the homepage gives your frost dates, which is where every planting date in the garden starts.