Lifetime 60069 Raised Garden Bed Kit, 4 x 4', Brown

My advice for starting a garden…buy these beds! I bought 3, then I bought 3 more. I’ve had 3 summers of wonderful fresh vegetables and this summer I added beautiful cutting flowers. The beds are perfect, no wear or tear. Not too deep or too shallow. They work wonderfully.My advice is to put some cardboard down on the grass in the size you want your garden to be. Place the beds on top, you’ll want to be able to walk around all 4 sides. Make sure it’s full sun. Fill with some good organic garden soil and then add a bag or two of organic compost. Start with easy vegetables, you can’t go wrong with tomatoes and herbs, maybe some cucumbers on a trellis. Add some marigolds around the edge to brighten it up and deter bugs. Maybe next year add zucchini, yellow squash, pole beans, maybe some peppers and eggplant. Then for your second or third year throw in some zinnia seeds. They bring all the bees, butterflies and hummingbirds! Then if you’re anything like me, you might add some dahlia tubers next. Now you have amazing flowers to cut and arrange plus all the delicious vegetables. I love the flowers so much I’m contemplating either added a few more beds or just making the 6 I have all flowers. Time will tell. Happy growing!Oh and remember to fertilize here and there (I missed that step and still have an amazing garden). If you live in a deer prone area, you might want to add fence poles and netting, my fence poles are 7 feet high. I’ve had no problem with deer or rabbits getting in but the squirrels like to get in and eat tomatoes and I’ve seen chipmunks feasting on my strawberries! It’s ok, there’s plenty to go around! My garden is my happy place. Btw, the beds take around 5 minutes to put together and it’s so easy, a child could do it. My beds sit out under a blanket of snow all winter, it’s all good, they are like new unlike rusty metal or wood that needs to be sanded and treated. I’m very pleased.Note, don’t plant mint in the beds, it’s spreads. If you plant a strawberry plant in your first year, you’ll have the whole bed filled with strawberries by the second year! I hope this review helped someone today.

We ordered six of these and they're AMAZING. Durable, stackable (two squares makes an 18" tall raised bed) and really well made. Per photos, we simply had some high-quality dirt dumped in our driveway ($300) and then ordered a few bags of vermiculite and coco coir here on Amazon ($120); all that got divided evenly and dumped into each garden square, filling them up. I'll admit that doing this project RIGHT is not cheap, but once these beds are filled, you won't have to do it again and guess what you get: (A) nearly-free vegetables for most of Summer and Fall, (B) all the compostable scraps from your kitchen can just be tossed into these and (C) mulched leaves in the Fall can go right on top of these for optional winter protection -- you can dump that stuff onto these like mini-landfills to help Nature out.In our project, five of the gardens went along the sunniest side of our yard and one extra bed went into a shadier section for shade-friendly veggies and/or flowers (our dog made an appearance in that photo!) Once ready to plant, we bought young veggies at Lowes (good prices/variety there) and planted seeds for things like radishes, carrots and beets.Once our 1st Summer kicked into gear, WOW -- we could literally not stop growing things and will have to dial it back next year, haha, planting less veggies. Everything did so well that the gardens were overfilled and we had to compost veggies once Summer ended (that means wasted water and time). These beds can cause a small plant to explode in growth because of the deep soil and quality dirt; you may simply need less plantings because one of our kale plants grew so large, it fed two people for 5 months (July-November).NOTES & TIPS FOR GREAT INSTALLATIONS----------------------------------------------------1) The sides WILL bow out inevitably, especially if you stack it to the full 18" height. We didn't do it during the 1st Summer of use, but we will hammer 4 small copper pipes (which turn a nice green eventually) around the exterior-middle of each side of the square (so 1 pipe hammered into the ground on each side); you can use the same material or something else that's not flexible, like tall pieces of wood or hard plastic stakes. Whatever mix of stuff you put in the gardens, it'll be heavy when wet/frozen, so stop the bowing *** BEFORE *** it happens or you'll never correct it easily.2) Bury the gardens about an 1" into the ground; this will help keep the sides more secure over time and combined with the stakes surrounding each side of the square(s), it'll prevent any chance the plastic pieces could disconnect.3) MAKE SURE YOU LEVEL THE SQUARES, as they connect via vertical slots. This means if a side is vertically crooked, it can get worse and you'll eventually find it falls out of place with no easy means to fix the issue other than redoing the entire square. (UPDATE: Winter freeze/thaw cycles soften the ground even more, so you may have to re-level your square(s) by "lifting" one or more corners and slipping some dirt or wood underneath. This was only an issue with 1 of 6 gardens due to flooding in our yard.)TIP: If you're stacking these, simply line the ground with cardboard since you really don't need to worry if the ground has been dug up a bit and "mixed" into the bottom of your raised garden. At 18" tall, that's MORE than enough room for the most rigorous deep-root-developing plants. Keep life easy and remember, the cardboard will kill the grass/weeds now and naturally decompose later so worms can easily get into your garden(s) and aerate the soil for you.

My garden beds arrived quickly. I am surprised though that there were no missing pieces. The shipping box was totally destroyed and both ends were hanging by one flap each. The UPS guy must have been very careful to stuff all the pieces back into the shipping box before he leaned it against the side of my building.This set of 3 garden beds is VERY easy to assemble. No tools were needed. The individual pieces are light weight and easy to maneuver. I stacked 2 beds to make one taller bed because my garden space is very tiny. As long as the unit is placed on fairly level ground the two beds snap together without a hitch. Other reviewers have mentioned that the long connectors needed to snap together 2 beds were not included in their parts kits. That was not the case for me. Everything needed to construct the beds and stack or not stack them was included. They look very nice......very lowkey. We have termite issues in my region. These beds will not become termite magnets. As a sidebar to the manufacturer: Make these in sets of four beds to enable gardeners to have two stacks of 2 beds.I cannot comment on durability as I have only owned them for about 36 hours. I live in SoCal, so we can garden year round. If there is any type of problem, I will add to this review.I would definitely buy them again and recommend them to other gardeners.