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Wondering if a Vego Metal Raised Garden Bed is a solid choice for your garden setup? We’ve used everything from cinder blocks to rocks to logs for our raised beds, but we wanted to see how a pre-made metal bed really compared. How does it stack up? And has it been worth it? In this post, we’ll explore everything we discovered testing out a Vego bed to help you find out if it’s right for you.
- Raised beds and in-ground and hugels, oh my…
- Vego Garden Classic Collection 9-in-1 Metal Raised Bed Kit Review
- Pros of the Vego bed
- Cons of the Vego bed
- Putting the Vego 9-in-1 Together
- Who is a Vego Garden Bed best suited for?
- How to Get a Vego Metal Raised Bed
- To wrap it all up…
- Go down the gardening rabbit hole with us…
- Get on the email list (and get a free PDF garden planner!)
Raised beds and in-ground and hugels, oh my…
I’ve had a variety of garden types here on our homestead over the last ten years. Buckets, raised beds, hugelkultur beds, and even a few traditional in-ground beds.
Growing in our ground is tricky because we live on a big limestone shelf. You dig down even just a few inches and BAM you hit a rock. Try another spot? Yep, another rock. Because of this, the one in-ground bed we tried was very short-lived. It’s basically been raised beds ever since.
Usually, we try to do the least expensive version of a thing that we can. We built our previous raised beds out of logs, bamboo, and (most successfully) rocks. I mean, we have a million of them up here — the least we could do is build some raised beds out of them.
Last year, our beds were all but destroyed, so we totally cleared the garden area with the intention of starting over. My husband, Mark, really wanted to do something more purpose-built this time. I had originally wanted to build cedar boxes, but he wasn’t interested in putting money and effort into something that would rot eventually. I assumed he’d gravitate towards something like concrete blocks, but to my surprise, he suggested getting a metal bed.
Long story short, we ended up getting a Vego Garden 9-in-1 Classic Metal Raised Bed Kit.
In this post, I’ll show you why we picked it, the pros and cons, and some tips and tricks we learned to make putting it together easier.
Vego Garden Classic Collection 9-in-1 Metal Raised Bed Kit Review
Why We Chose a Vego Garden Bed
Honestly, there are a ton of metal garden beds out there. I went down the rabbit hole of Reddit threads, Facebook groups, and blog reviews, as I do for basically everything I buy. I also checked our local big-box and farm-supply stores to see what they offered. Heck, I even considered getting my own metal panels and fashioning them together.
But when it came down to it, a Vego bed seemed like the best balance of quality and economy. Yes, the cost is higher up front, but spread out over the 20+ years they say it’ll last, it works out better than basically any other option we’ve tried so far.
The discussions I saw with folks lamenting how their cheaper metal beds fell apart after one or two seasons, plus the overall positive discussion I encountered around Vego beds, made it an easy decision to give them a try.
First Impressions About the Company
At this point, I’m no stranger to ordering substantial items online. I’m talking big items like our My Green Mattress, our Boroux, and our entire off-grid solar system, just to name a few. In all of those purchase decisions, a big driver behind why I chose them at all was what I heard about their customer service. I’m not about to plunk down my hard-earned money just for the company to be unresponsive.
That said, I was impressed by how communicative they were. I reached out to them before buying to see if I could have it shipped to our PO Box, and a real human actually got back to me about it within about 15 minutes. They weren’t able to accommodate the PO Box (which honestly, is pretty typical; neither could Boroux or My Green Mattress), but it was nice to have a real human get back to me promptly and work with our shipping needs.
Tracking my order was super easy and shipping was prompt with zero delays. And while I don’t love the follow-up email funnel every company puts you in after your order, theirs were actually really helpful without being spammy.
And if it matters for you, they’re pretty active on Reddit and seem to respond to comments and questions frequently.
Pros of the Vego bed
Low-Waste Packaging
They were able to fit a LOT of garden bed into a super small box! I was impressed from an efficiency standpoint. Vego makes a point of keeping everything as low-waste as possible, and that was immediately evident when I opened the box. Minimizing waste has always been super important to us, so this was a plus.
Fully recyclable at the end of its lifespan
We happen to live in proximity to a proper metal recycler, so when this bed is beyond its useful life, we’ll be able to load it into the truck and take it there. No, you won’t be popping this in your local mixed recyclables bin with your plastic bottles and cardboard, but the fact that it CAN be recycled is a huge bonus for us.
You can move it around
I’ve lost track of the various garden configurations I’ve had on our property over the last ten years. I almost never do the same layout twice and love to switch things up whenever it makes sense. The fact that I can take the dirt out of this and just move it wherever I want is fantastic. It’s lightweight and easier to manipulate than our rock or cinder block beds.
Substantial materials
The bed is made from thick steel and didn’t feel flimsy at all when we took the pieces out of the box. The paint layer was also very forgiving as we figured out how to assemble the pieces. There were MANY times we accidentally hit it with a tool or a rock that I totally expected it to scratch but it never did. Heck, we even had a derecho blow stuff into it and not a scuff to be seen!
Short assembly time
We timed ourselves putting it together before I even saw a claim on assembly time on their website, and I have to say, it was pretty spot on. It took 39 minutes for the two us to put the whole thing together, and that included time spent reading directions and figuring out a good workflow. They say it should take “under 40 minutes”, so that feels pretty accurate. I have no doubt that, had we been assembling multiple beds, the next ones would have gone together way faster.
Loads of Add-Ons
Part of the reason we sprung for a manufactured raised bed was being better able to keep our pets out of it. I hemmed and hawed for months trying to figure out how to redesign our gardens after our cat basically destroyed all of them. And even though the cat is sadly no longer with us, our dog still has this weird thing about burying random stuff in the garden corners.
I thought of designing all kinds of chicken wire structures, hoop houses, fencing, you name it. But at the end of the day, something like a custom-fit mesh bed cover that fits snugly over a metal bed that my dog can’t get into is a way better option both practically and aesthetically.
Beyond that, there are all kinds of irrigation and trellis add-ons, so you can have fun playing with different layouts and growing solutions.
Buy a Vego Garden Bed directly from Vego here
Cons of the Vego bed
Cost
As I said earlier, these are not cheap. If you’re growing a garden on an extremely limited budget, these may not be your first choice (hey, been there). That said, this bed feels like it’s worth the money. I mean literally “feels”. This is not a cheap-feeling garden bed. The metal is thick, the paint is smooth, the edges are finished, and every piece looks and feels consistent.
There is some plastic waste
While I was delighted to see most of the packaging was cardboard or paper, there was plastic film on each side of the panels that had to be removed before assembly. And I get it: you don’t want these pieces to get scratched up during shipment. I think this actually bugged my husband more than it did me, and in the grand scheme of things it’s not the biggest deal. This was literally all we threw out from the experience.
Read: Going Zero-Waste When No One Around You Seems to Care
Putting the Vego 9-in-1 Together
What Comes in the 9-in-1 Garden Bed Kit
The 9-in-1 garden bed kit comes with the following:
- User manual
- Metal panels
- Nuts, bolts, and washers
- Small wrench
- Bracing rod (for certain configurations)
- Rubber edging
Assembly Process
They have a complete booklet detailing all possible configurations of the 9-in-1 kit, and I have to say, there are some fun shapes you can do. We chose the 6.5×3.5 ft configuration to match an adjacent concrete block bed. We want to do an honest compare/contrast of the two bed types, and to keep the experiment consistent, they need to be roughly the same shape and size.
Following the directions, we removed the plastic, laid out the pieces in our chosen configuration, and attached the pieces with the included nuts, bolts, and washers.
Buy a Vego Garden Bed directly from Vego here
Tips for Easier Assembly
Get a #3 Phillips head and a 10mm ratchet for easier installation
The kit comes with one wrench, and you CAN totally get away with just finger tightening and then going back over everything with this tool. But you’ll have a better experience (and go faster, if you’re working as a team like we did) if you have a #3 Phillips head screwdriver and a 10mm ratchet.
The installation video shows this as an alternative, using a power drill instead of a regular screwdriver. Either is fine, so use what makes sense for you.
Have a little bin for the hardware.
I dug out one of our old Tupperware lunch boxes with dividers to keep the nuts, bolts, and washers separated. This helped us keep everything neatly organized and not all jumbled together or spilling onto the ground. And with two of us working together, having the hardware in a bin like this one kept everything handy for both of us.
Actually watch the install video.
We didn’t watch it, and with just the paper manual we did pretty well. The bed itself is super easy to figure out, and the instructions are pretty clear.
But I did notice, in watching the video later, the woman doing the demo shows how you can just peel apart enough of the plastic film to expose the holes for assembly and then remove it the rest of the way later. It hadn’t occurred to me at the time (and the paper manual totally just says to remove it) but leaving the film on while you’re assembling is a great idea to minimize accidental bumps and scrapes. You may have other revelations by watching the assembly video, so give it a watch.
Who is a Vego Garden Bed best suited for?
This is our first time with a proper raised bed that we didn’t cobble together out of random materials, so I was absolutely delighted by the experience! I could easily see these beds being great in these cases:
You have poor ground to grow in.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all about a good in-ground garden. I love Back to Eden, sheet mulch, hugelkultur, no-till garden situations. And I wish that’s what we had on this property, but it just isn’t. We live on top of a giant limestone shelf. Raised beds have been a very necessary part of our homestead in the many years we’ve been here.
You want to keep critters out.
Raised beds already have a leg up on most other garden systems in terms of pest deterrence. The walls of this bed are high enough and slick enough that I don’t see rabbits getting into it easily. If you put some sort of barrier on the bottom, you could easily keep out moles and other burrowing animals. And you can use one of the cover add-ons to keep out other, larger animals like deer.
You want a clean aesthetic.
Again, I’m usually a big fan of using the materials you have at hand. I’ve created raised beds out of limestone, logs, railroad ties, and wild bamboo because it was available to us. While those options were economical and looked good for a time, none of them quite met our needs. The limestone here is jagged, so it never really looked nice, nor could we achieve the depth we really needed for a raised bed with them. Logs were okay, but again, we lacked depth and they rotted over time. Bamboo splintered and rotted pretty quickly. And railroad ties should only be used for non-edible plants, so they were never a great option for us to begin with.
The Vego beds, on the other hand, are very smooth and uniform. Even the 17″ beds have enough height to grow what we want (I mean, you can get the 26″ or 32″ inch models, but for us that just seems like overkill). Aesthetically, everything matches and looks purposeful. You could go crazy and get them in all the colors, or keep it all neatly monochromatic. Totally up to you!
They had more color options than some other metal raised-bed makers, which I liked. We opted for the sky blue since our house and shed roofs are blue. It’s a bit more muted than I expected, but I think I like it better that way because it doesn’t compete with the deep blue. Depending on the light, sometimes it looks more white or gray.
You want a raised bed you can easily take with you.
If you’re in a situation where you have a bit of a yard but move frequently, these beds are a great, low-effort way to have beautiful garden beds you can take with you to your next home. These beds are lightweight, disassemble easily, and transport readily. Just take them apart, move to your next place, and reassemble.
Before we settled on our cordwood homestead, we never lived in the same house for more than five years. We rented little houses quite a bit and changed towns several times. But we always had a yard, and I would have LOVED to have had a few of these beds to take from place to place. They would have fit nicely in all of our old yards.
How to Get a Vego Metal Raised Bed
Direct from the manufacturer
I always say in every review post I make that the best place to buy the item is directly from the maker/vendor. It makes any warranty issues way simpler to deal with since they already have your info, and you don’t have to worry about it potentially being counterfeit.
Buy a Vego Garden Bed directly from Vego here
Buy a Vego Bed on Amazon
If you have a gift card or want to put some beds on a Wedding Registry to take advantage of that sweet, sweet completion discount, I sure won’t stop you. Buying on Amazon isn’t always my favorite for items like this, so making sure you buy directly from the manfacturer’s Amazon store for ANY big ticket item, as opposed to a third-party seller, is the way to go.
Buy a Vego Bed on Amazon here
For the record, yes, these are affiliate links. Buying through an affiliate link never costs you extra, but I may earn a commission. I’m notoriously picky about what I will and won’t rep because I never want to promote something I don’t actually believe will help you. I was honestly a bit skeptical at first, but I really like these garden beds.
To wrap it all up…
A Vego garden bed may be the perfect solution if you have an eye for sustainability and want to craft nice-looking raised beds for your home or homestead. They’re great for flowers, veggies, fruits, and anything else you fancy growing! They have a modest upfront cost, but the result is a stunning raised bed setup that could last you decades.
Go down the gardening rabbit hole with us…
I’m definitely no Master Gardener, but growing our own food (even in small amounts) has been a key piece of the homesteading puzzle for us. If it is for you too, check out these other posts I’ve written over the years!
- 12 Essentials for Planning Your Perfect Homestead Garden
- Garden Projects You Can Do For Cheap or Free
- How to Make an Abundant Container Garden For Free
- 30+ Ways to Start a Vegetable Garden for Cheap or Free
- Container Gardening Ideas For Beginners
- Awesome Online Gardening Resources for Beginners
- 18 Things to Look For In Your Perfect Homestead Property
- How to Homestead in the City or Suburbs: 8 Easy Ways to Start
Get on the email list (and get a free PDF garden planner!)
I’m probably the least spammy blogger out there, so no worries that you’ll have ten bajillion emails by tomorrow. But all of my email subscribers get free access to our Members-Only Resource Library, which has a free mini version of our full-sized garden planner, along with loads of other free guides!
Learn more about our original cordwood homestead project here. And be sure to join us on Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram for more homesteading goodies that don’t necessarily make it to the blog. Thanks for reading!
