Cedar raised garden beds and planter boxes: questions, answered.

The first 250 cedar raised garden beds and planter boxes we build, sold before they exist. You pick a size and grade, pay the founding price online, and we cut and assemble the batch in Bolton, Ontario. Deliveries begin January 2027. Every Founding Batch order is delivered by 28 February 2027. The founding price is about 32% below the launch price we charge once the batch is gone, and both are printed on every size. The 250 is a ceiling, not a target: every order placed is built and shipped whether the batch fills or not.

At the founding price, our elevated cedar raised garden beds run $129.00 to $276.99 and the planter boxes $158.99 to $241.99, in Canadian dollars before tax, with courier shipping to any address in Canada included; the smallest is a Narrow 24 inch Standard bed in Knotty and the largest a Wide 72 inch Deep bed in Clear. The launch price, printed beside every founding price, is what the same size costs once the Founding Batch is gone. Every size page shows what its price is made of, and the compare page sets each one beside what the best-known Canadian cedar planter brand charged for the same size and grade on the day we checked. Compare and prices · Shop by size.

Cancel any time before your order ships. Full refund within 15 days. Email or phone with your order number and the refund goes back to the card you paid with; there is no fee and no form. If we are more than 30 days late against the delivery date in your confirmation, you can also cancel for a full refund within 15 days, which is your right under Ontario's Consumer Protection Act. After delivery, the change-of-mind return terms on the pre-order terms page apply. Pre-order terms.

Yes, any time before your order ships. Email [email protected] with your order number and what you want changed. A new delivery address is a note on the order. A new size or grade is repriced at the founding price while the batch is open: if it costs more you pay the difference by card, if it costs less the difference goes back to the card you paid with. Since you can also cancel for a full refund at any point before shipping, a change never costs more than ordering the new size fresh.

Because the batch is built to order and the cedar and steel for it are bought as one lot; paying at reservation is what makes a 250-unit run and its price possible. Your card is charged once, through the same Helcim checkout our fence customers use, and we do not hold card details. Every dollar comes back if you cancel before your order ships, so what you pay is a price with a way out, not a deposit you can lose.

The launch price printed beside every founding price is what the same bed costs once the Founding Batch is gone. Yes, we charge it: it is the working price of the line from that day, not a number struck through to flatter the founding price. Both come from the same cost model, the founding price at a thinner margin for the people who order before a single unit exists. If our costs change, the model changes both prices together and the pages update. Compare and prices.

Because it is built from cost, not from a discount off an imagined regular price. Each size page shows the breakdown: the cedar, the steel legs and hardware, the liner, the carton, the courier shipping across Canada (included), card processing, and what is left for cutting, assembly and the shop. Shipping a carton of this weight across the country is the largest single line after the wood, which is why a small bed still costs what it does. The founding price is that cost plus 30 percent, or, where the best-known Canadian cedar planter brand sold the same size and grade for less than that on the day we checked, its price, matched; we never go below our cost, so on a few sizes ours is higher and the compare page says which. Beds start at $129.00 and boxes at $158.99.

Because there is no bed yet. The product pictures are our own renderings and drawings from the working geometry: the same board sizes, leg positions, bolt pattern and plank gaps the shop will build to. The planted scenes (the large picture on the planter home page, the category pictures and some shop cards) are illustrations, made with an AI image tool from those renderings and checked against the drawings, and each one is labelled Illustration. We would rather show you an honest drawing than a borrowed photograph. The first photographs will be of the first batch, taken in Bolton, and we will publish them on these pages and send them to everyone with an order.

NorthStar Building Products, 240 Ellwood Drive West, Bolton, Ontario L7E 4W6, the same company that builds the fence panels on this site. Phone 647-569-2163, email [email protected]. NorthStar is Canadian owned and operated, with one shop and no dealers in the planter line. The pre-order terms are linked from every size page, the cart, the checkout and your confirmation email, and the confirmation carries every term you agreed to, so you have your own copy of the agreement. Pre-order terms.

Deep is 12 inches of soil: tomatoes, peppers, carrots, beets, kale, bush beans and most herbs, anything with a real root. Standard is 8 inches: lettuce, spinach, arugula, radishes, green onions, strawberries and annual flowers, with fewer bags to fill and less weight on a balcony. Both stand 30 inches tall; Standard is shallower under the soil, not shorter on the legs. If you are not sure what you will grow, buy Deep: it grows everything Standard does.

Narrow is 11.5 inches wide outside, one row of plants along a wall, a fence or a balcony rail, and it leaves the walkway. Wide is 18 inches, two rows of greens or one row of tomatoes with herbs in front, and the usual choice for a patio or a yard. Both come in the same five lengths from 24 to 72 inches, and the price difference between them at any length is printed on the size pages.

The same boards from the same mill, the same thickness, legs, liner, hardware and warranty. Clear boards are selected for clear, even grain with no knots. Knotty boards carry sound, tight knots and the small checks cedar grows with. Clear costs more because clear boards cost us more; the difference is printed on every size. Choose Clear for a front entrance you look at every day and Knotty for the vegetable plot, where the soil hides most of the wood anyway.

Yes. Cedar base planks sit on cleats inside the box with drainage gaps of 3/8 to 1/2 inch between them, and a fabric liner sits over the planks and up the walls so the soil stays in and the water gets out. Nothing pools, and the legs keep the base off the ground so air moves under it. Do not add a layer of rocks at the bottom; it holds water where the roots are instead of letting it leave.

The same cedar box and the same 12 inches of soil. A planter box stands 24 inches tall, so it sits beside a seat, on a step or under a window; a raised garden bed stands 30 inches, working height for vegetables, so you tend it standing up. Boxes are 18 inches wide in six lengths from 18 to 72 inches; beds come Wide or Narrow in five lengths from 24 to 72. If the question is food, buy the bed. If it is the front step, buy the box.

Two end panels with the steel corner brackets already bolted on, the long boards for each course, pre-drilled, the cedar base planks, the fabric liner, a hardware bag with the carriage bolts, nuts and washers counted for the size, and the wrench. Nothing else is needed. The parts list on the assembly page matches the label inside the carton, so you can check the count before you start, and we send any missing part by courier the same week. Assembly.

30 inches puts the soil surface just below hip height for most adults, so you plant, weed and pick standing up rather than kneeling or bending to the ground. It is also above the reach of a rabbit and out of the splash of a downpour. Planter boxes stand 24 inches, the height of a seat or a low step, because they sit beside people rather than in front of them. Neither height adjusts: the legs are fixed, and a paver under a low foot levels the bed on a slope.

Cedar is the wood people have grown food in for generations, and ours is untreated: no preservatives, no stain, no sealer inside the box, nothing between the wood and your soil. Canada's organic standard does not permit lumber treated with prohibited preservatives in new installations that touch soil, which is the plainest way to say why we do not use it. Modern treated lumber is copper-based rather than arsenic-based, so this is a choice about what touches your soil, not a warning.

The durability tables in the USDA Wood Handbook put Western Red Cedar in the resistant class, the same group as white oak and redwood, because of the extractives in the wood rather than anything added to it. Published service-life ranges for that class run 15 to 30 years above ground and 5 to 15 years in ground contact. A bed holding wet soil sits between those, which is why the liner, the drainage gaps and the legs matter. We would rather give you a range we can defend than a number we cannot. How long a cedar raised bed lasts.

Yes, outside, over the first year or two, to a silver grey, and then it stops changing. It is cosmetic: the colour change is the surface reacting to sunlight, not decay, and the wood underneath is the same. A penetrating exterior oil in the first season holds the amber colour if you prefer it, renewed every two or three years on the outside faces only. Do not paint or seal the inside of the box; the soil side should stay bare.

Western Red Cedar from British Columbia, milled in BC and cut to size in Bolton, Ontario. British Columbia's forest law requires replanting after harvest, and the Western Red Cedar Lumber Association reports three seedlings planted for every tree cut. The boards are the same 1x6 stock our cedar fence panels are built from, so the mill, the grade and the moisture content are ones we already buy and know. We do not own a mill; the cedar is bought, and the build is Ontario.

A fabric liner of the same class as landscape fabric: water passes through it, soil and fine roots do not. It keeps the soil off the boards and out of the drainage gaps, so the wood stays cleaner and dries between waterings, and it stops soil sifting onto the ground below. It is not a waterproof membrane; the box drains through it. Use it. If it ever tears, any landscape fabric from a garden centre replaces it in ten minutes.

No. The durability is in the wood, not the grade. A sound, tight knot is where a branch grew and is as solid as the board around it; the small checks are surface marks from drying, not cracks through the board. We cull boards with loose or dead knots at the saw because they can drop out, and that is the only way a knot affects a bed. Clear costs more because clear boards are scarcer, not because they last longer.

Between 29 and 229 litres to the fill line, which is 2 to 9 bags of 28 litres depending on the size. Every size page prints its own figure in litres, cubic feet and bags, and the soil calculator works it out for any size, any fill level and any bag size. Buy a raised-bed or container mix rather than topsoil: garden soil compacts in a box and drains badly, and a bag mix weighs less on the way up the stairs. Soil calculator.

The lightest beds are the Narrow 24 Standard (about 111 to 137 lb filled) and the Narrow 24 Deep (about 154 to 193 lb filled); the 18 and 24 inch boxes are lighter still. Weight is the number to check, because a balcony's rules are about load, not size: each size page prints the filled weight range, and the building manager will want it. After weight, choose by walkway. A Narrow bed against the wall leaves most of a standard balcony free to walk past; a Wide bed suits a balcony that is a room rather than a corridor. Size guide.

We count by the square-foot method, the spacing rule from Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening: one tomato, pepper or basil per square foot, four lettuce or strawberry plants, nine bush beans or onions, sixteen carrots or radishes. Growing space runs from 1.6 square feet in the smallest bed to 8.1 in the largest, and every size page prints its own count for the common crops. Count whole squares, plant the edges with the low things, and give vines a trellis at the back.

Two short beds give the same growing area as one long one with more edge to reach from, and each moves on its own. One long bed uses less floor and costs less per square foot. In numbers: two Wide 24 Deep beds give 5.2 square feet and cost $345.98 in Knotty, against 5.3 square feet and $176.99 for one Wide 48 Deep. Stairs, doorways and who is carrying it decide the rest. Size guide.

Deliveries begin January 2027. Every Founding Batch order is delivered by 28 February 2027. Orders ship in the sequence they were placed, by courier, in one flat carton, with shipping anywhere in Canada included in the price. We email a production update every two weeks from the first cut, then the week your carton is with the courier, with the tracking number. If a date ever moves, we write to you with the new one and you choose between the new date, with the store credit we offer, and a full refund.

Yes, to any address in Canada that a courier serves, and the size page shows how much of the price it is. The only addition at checkout is sales tax at the rate for the province the order ships to, shown before you pay. Remote addresses that need a freight forwarder or a ferry are quoted before you pay, not after. The Founding Batch ships within Canada only; if you are outside Canada, email us and we will tell you what is possible.

Yes. Say so in the notes box at checkout, or email us after ordering, and we hold the carton at 240 Ellwood Drive West, Bolton, Ontario L7E 4W6, Monday to Friday 9:00 to 5:00, and email you the day it is ready. The shop is off Highway 50, about 25 minutes north of Brampton, and the carton fits in a car with the back seats down or in any pickup. Pickup does not change the price of a Founding Batch order; the shipping component is part of the batch cost.

Photograph the carton and the damage within 48 hours and email the photographs with your order number. We replace the damaged part or the whole unit at our cost, by courier, and you do not ship anything back; a cracked board is a new board in the mail, not a claim form. Cedar's knots, checks and colour variation are the material and not damage. Keep the carton until the bed is assembled, in case a part needs to travel again.

Change-of-mind returns after delivery are accepted within 30 days, unused and in the carton, with return shipping paid by the customer and the price refunded in full. Before the order ships, the answer is simpler: cancel for a full refund, no reason needed. Damage on arrival and defects are handled separately and at our cost. Email or phone with your order number to start a return and we send the courier label and the address. Pre-order terms.

Yes, for every size. The end panels ship with the legs already fitted, so assembly is the long boards bolted through the legs, the base planks dropped onto the cleats, and the liner. One person can do the sizes up to 48 inches start to finish; the 60 and 72 inch beds bolt together alone but are easier to stand up and move with two. The wrench is in the box, and the seven steps are on the assembly page. Assembly.

None beyond the wrench in the box. The holes are drilled, the legs are fitted to the end panels, and the bolts, nuts and washers are in the hardware bag, counted for your size. A tape measure helps for squaring the box by its diagonals, and a level tells you which foot wants a paver. If you have a socket wrench it is faster than ours; the nuts are standard and the size is printed on the hardware bag.

Yes. Cedar and powder-coated steel are made for it, and the bed can stay full of soil. Stop watering in late fall so the soil dries down before it freezes; a bed that goes into winter saturated is harder on the boards than one that goes in dry. Snow on top is fine. In spring, check the nuts once with the wrench after the first thaw, since wood moves a little through its first winter, and then plant as soon as the soil is workable.

No. Nothing is required for the bed to last; cedar weathers to silver grey outside and keeps working. If you want to hold the amber colour, brush a penetrating exterior oil on the outside faces in the first season and renew it every two or three years. Never seal, paint or stain the inside of the box, and never use a film-forming finish outside either: it traps moisture behind it and peels. The steel legs need nothing; a scratch in the coating can be touched up with any exterior enamel.

3 years from delivery on the structure and the steel legs, both grades: a board that splits through, a joint that opens or a leg that fails in normal garden use is replaced at our cost, part or unit. Anything damaged in transit is replaced the same way; photograph it within 48 hours. Cedar's knots, checks and silvering are the material, not defects, and a bed left standing in water is outside the warranty. The term is printed on every size page and in your confirmation email, so the term you see when you order is the term you have.