The Best Ergonomic Garden Tool
Ergonomic Gardens waist-high raised garden beds
The Best Materials and Construction For Your Raised Garden Beds
The right raised garden bed defines your gardening experience. It is the most important ergonomic garden tool you can buy. Our metal raised garden beds are made in the USA and built to last. At every turn, we chose the best materials and design. At a height of 36 inches, they offer unparalleled comfort for the novice and seasoned gardener. The biggest investment you will make is your time in filling, establishing and tending a raised bed garden. Set yourself up for years of success with the best raised garden bed you can buy.
Advantages of Ergonomic Gardens Raised Garden Beds
- We make gardening more accessible with our gardening done UpRightTM design. Our 36-inch high beds are waist-high for true stand-up gardening. This enhanced accessibility is ideal for gardeners of all ages and experience.
- Our beds are made from high-quality USA steel with 20 micron thick galvanization, the best protection we could find. These garden beds are designed to withstand the elements and last for decades.
- We use minimum 24-gauge steel and our corrugation pattern is the most rigid on the market for unmatched bed strength.
- Our steel composition is simple: iron, carbon and zinc.
- We don’t paint our garden beds, most notably, not on the inside surface in contact with your garden soil for many years.
- We selected the highest quality top-edge trim we could find for maximum comfort while you tend your garden.
- We bring them to you and assemble them in your garden. How easy is that? All you have to do is fill them and enjoy them.
- New from 2024 is the BedLock Evolution Garden™ bed, an ergonomic garden tool and composting raised garden bed in one! You can enjoy an elevated garden experience while producing yards of the best raised garden bed soil.
- Learn more about the advantages of our garden beds in the descriptions below and in our FAQs.
Compare Ergonomic Gardens to Other Garden Beds
Many of our customers have turned to Ergonomic Gardens after trying other raised garden beds.
- Raised garden beds that are too low or mid-range in height place gardeners in the worst possible position, halfway between gardening upright and down on the ground. This leads to awkward stooping or kneeling and puts the most strain on your back and legs.
- Wood raised garden beds last 5-10 years.
- Many beds are made of much thinner steel and have shallow corrugation patterns. These beds require dozens of screws (sometimes over a hundred!) and cross bracing to compensate for thin steel and weak construction.
- Some beds can take hours to assemble, working uncomfortably on the ground, not an ergonomic start. We’ve tested these beds ourselves and our bodies and fingers hurt when we were done assembling them.
- Many beds use a thin, hard top-edge trim that is not much better than the steel edge alone when contacted.
Our Ergonomic Garden Beds
Revolution Garden
4.25′ long x 39″ wide x 3′ tall
1.4 yards of total fill (38 cubic feet)
12.5 square feet of garden space.
Good planter for herbs, edible flowers, onions, shallots…
Evolution Garden
6.25′ long x 39″ wide x 3′ tall
2.1 yards of total fill (55 cubic feet)
18.5 square feet of garden space.
Good planter for greens, legumes, eggplants, determinate tomatoes, peppers…
MacroEvolution Garden
8.25′ long x 39″ wide x 3′ tall
2.8 yards of total fill (75 cubic feet)
25 square feet of growing space.
Good planter for larger footprint vegetables like cabbages, indeterminate tomatoes, tomatillos… or if you want to grow a lot of something for canning
New Raised Garden Bed In 2024! The BedLockTM Evolution Garden
The BedLock Evolution Garden™ bed is an ergonomic garden tool and composting raised garden bed in one, making the process of creating and utilizing compost easier, right where you need it, in your garden. The BedLock™ Evolution Garden retains the dimensions of a standard Evolution Garden Bed, measuring 6.25 feet long, 39 inches wide, and 36 inches tall. It holds a total fill capacity of 2.1 yards (56 cubic feet). The key feature of the BedLock™ Evolution Garden is its removable fasteners. These fasteners are removable from the outside, allowing the panels of the garden bed to be pulled away, revealing a pillar of compost, like a cake mold. This innovative design makes it much easier to access compost for use in other garden beds. This feature is currently patent pending, ensuring that this design remains unique to our brand. Read more about how we arrived at this design, and its advantages, below.
The Revolutionary BedLock™ Evolution Garden
An Ergonomic Garden Tool and Composting Raised Bed
One of our early experiences with metal raised garden beds was moving one to a new spot in our garden. The bottom two-thirds of that hügelkultur bed were filled with logs, leaves, and garden waste. After two years, the logs were still there, but everything else had composted into rich, dark soil. This led us to an idea: why not create a garden bed that more easily produces quality soil right where we need it?
On that early bed, we had to dig down from the top to empty it, which was not ergonomic at all. Drawing on this experience, we decided to design a more user-friendly composting garden bed. After several prototypes, we finally have one we think you will like, the BedLock™ Evolution Garden.
Convenience and Value
There are two jobs around the home and garden that the BedLock Evolution Garden™ addresses.
- Raised bed gardeners know that getting enough quality soil to the garden can be a challenge both physically and economically. Even with hügelkultur methods, you still need 4-6 inches of top soil to establish a garden bed. Raised bed gardening requires soil for filling and for top dressing in the fall. Whether a raised garden bed is 1 foot or 3 feet, settling happens and seasonal top dressing is a must.
- Hügelkultur makes use of yard waste that isn’t easy to compost. Rather than gathering up yard waste like logs, sticks & leaves and transporting them somewhere, putting them to use in the garden is more convenient and sustainable. Producing your own compost with a BedLock Evolution Garden™ bed creates 2.1 yards (56 cubic feet) of soil right where you need it while saving you time, money and effort.
To put this in perspective, 2.1 yards of bulk compost, when delivered, can cost between $150 to $200. Alternatively, purchasing 56, one-cubic-foot bags of compost could set you back $600 to $700. Either way, you have to get it to the garden. Moving 56 bags of soil ergonomically would be a challenge. Wouldn’t it be great to make that much soil for free, right in your garden? Plus, you’ll know exactly what went in to that soil, you made it!
A Compliment to Composting
Between our yard, garden, chickens and kitchen we generate a lot of compostable material, but not all of it works well in our standard compost bins.
Managing compost effectively requires a plan for the various types of organic waste generated from different activities. To tackle this challenge, we developed a system that utilizes three distinct compost bins, each tailored to handle specific kinds of compostable material. This method ensures that every bit of organic waste is processed efficiently and returns to the garden as nutrient-rich compost.
Our first type of compost bin is a regular style, constructed from pallets or panels, which serves as the primary repository for the bulk of our chicken coop waste, green leafy garden waste, grass clippings, and vegetable kitchen waste. This bin is designed to handle a large volume of material and is the backbone of our composting system. We have two of these that we alternate.
Secondly, we have a black soldier fly bin (BSF), which is versatile enough to accommodate virtually any type of waste. We reserve this bin for items that might attract pests if added to the other compost bins. We also add chicken droppings collected from underneath the roosts. The BSF bin is particularly effective at breaking down these materials quickly due to the voracious appetite of the black soldier fly larvae. When it rains, the BSFs march out of the bin and we give them to our chickens as a treat. It also also generates a rich tea for treating our plants.
Finally, our hügelkultur garden beds are perfect for the more challenging organic materials such as logs, branches, brush, heavy stalks (like corn, sunflower, and sunchokes), and leaves. Hügelkultur encourages the incorporation of wood into the composting process, promoting the growth of mycelium, which increases the bioavailability of nutrients in your garden.
How to Use a BedLock Evolution Garden™
We have a 90 by 30-foot garden and a 1-acre yard. With our three BedLock™ gardens, one will be ready almost every year for the harvest of compost. We can fill one a year passively during our chores. For example, we put a new BedLock Evolution Garden™ bed in our garden in July and used it as a bin for garden stalks, leaves, light brush and weeds from the yard. By November, it was full and we topped it off with soil. In the spring, we’ll plant it and grow vegetables. It will be ready in about two years for ‘harvest’ of soil. Wood requires some time to fully decompose but corn stalks, light brush and leaves are well composted in two years. If we open a bed and the wood is still intact, we just add it back to a new bed. We have ~20 beds and some are quite large, over 10 feet long. We could make use of four composting beds. Most gardens would do well with one or two. We usually plant legumes in newly established beds as they do well in the new soil, are nitrogen fixing and are short cycle if there is settling.
Limitations of the BedLock Evolution Garden™
Hügelkultur works best in a permaculture setting. One of the key reasons hügelkultur is effective in permaculture is its ability to promote the growth of mycelium, the vegetative part of fungi. Mycelium forms vast networks in the soil, breaking down organic matter and making nutrients more bioavailable to plants. This symbiotic relationship enhances the overall health and productivity of the garden. A hügelkultur garden bed will grow well in years one and two but the real magic happens in years three and beyond. Breaking a raised garden bed down, particularly a hügelkultur one, is very disruptive for the soil biome and it can take years to recover. For this reason, a BedLock Evolution Garden™ can be a useful tool, and a compliment to your garden, but we recommend that you leave most of your beds undisturbed in a no-dig, permaculture mode.
Our standard beds use carriage bolts as they will be in place for decades. The fastening system for a BedLock Evolution Garden™ is meant to be easy to remove, which adds a little complexity to set-up. Once in place, the bed is as strong as our standard beds. We will assemble them for you the first time on delivery. The use case for the BedLock Evolution Garden™ is making use of difficult to compost material and generating yards of soil in the garden, while growing some food, but it will not perform as well as a mature, permaculture garden.
Best Ergonomic Garden Tool
The right raised garden bed is the foundation of gardening ergonomically
Made in USA
Our garden beds are made from steel sourced in the United States. We manufacture them right here in Maine
Long-Lasting
Our garden beds are made to last with galvanized steel composed of iron and zinc
Local Delivery
We deliver to your garden
within ~ 100 miles of Portland, ME, including parts of NH and MA
Why Ergonomic Gardens Tall Garden Beds?
- Ergonomic Gardens makes some of the tallest garden beds. The best ergonomic garden tool you can buy
- Our metal raised beds are the strongest available. We use minimum 24-gauge steel, one of the thickest on the market and our corrugation pattern has the highest structural integrity
- Long lasting, much longer than wood and other steel beds. Our materials should last 20-50 years as a metal raised garden bed
- Albedo, the ability to reflect heat, keeps metal garden beds at an even temperature (not too hot/not too cold)
- We get started weeks earlier in the spring with our raised beds and frost hardy plants
- No compacted soil from foot traffic, the aeration from looser soils in raised beds helps roots grow
- Enables soil quality control/improvement. Your soil has a biome and just like your gut biome, a healthy soil biome is critical to crop health, yields and pest resistance
- Grow anywhere, our raised beds can be placed on any surface that can safely hold the weight
