After spending a few weeks testing Garden of Goodness’s organic prepared meals, I discovered they’re tackling one of the biggest challenges in plant-based eating – creating truly delicious vegan food without compromising on quality ingredients.
As Australia’s first 100% certified organic prepared meal service, they’ve carved out a unique position in the market. Their completely oil-free, gluten-free meals are designed for health-conscious eaters who want convenient plant-based options without processed meat alternatives or artificial ingredients.
I ordered multiple boxes to thoroughly test their service, sampling everything from their comfort foods to gourmet offerings. This detailed review shares my honest experience with their meals, delivery service, and whether their premium pricing is justified for different types of customers.
Garden of Goodness Prepared Meals Review
Garden of Goodness Review Summary
Garden of Goodness delivers exceptionally high-quality organic vegan meals that are genuinely delicious (not just “good for vegan food”), making it perfect for health-conscious eaters who prioritize organic, plant-based nutrition and don’t mind paying a premium. While the limited menu variety and higher price point won’t suit everyone, the outstanding meal quality and thoughtful service features make it a standout choice for those seeking convenient, clean eating without processed alternatives.
Overall
-
Ordering - Website - 10/10
10/10
-
Food - Quality - 10/10
10/10
-
Ordering - Meal Choice - 5/10
5/10
-
Food - Taste - 9/10
9/10
-
Ordering - Delivery - 8/10
8/10
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Value For Money - 5/10
5/10
Pros
- 100% certified organic ingredients with exceptional meal quality and flavor
- Flexible portion sizes (300g-600g) perfect for singles or sharing
- Comprehensive filtering for common food intolerances
- Certified gluten-free kitchen suitable for coeliacs
- Well-designed website with hassle-free subscription management
Cons
- Limited menu with only 18 main meal options
- Premium pricing makes it one of the most expensive meal services
- Restricted delivery days in most areas
- Generic reheating instructions don’t specify best method for each meal
- Free delivery threshold requires significant spend ($200+)
Founded on the Gold Coast in 2018, Garden of Goodness (formerly known as Garden of Vegan) stands out as Australia’s first provider of ready-made meals using 100% certified organic ingredients.
In December 2024, the company rebranded from Garden of Vegan to Garden of Goodness. They chose to rebrand so that the name reflects their expanding vision to reach more Australians with their healthy, organic meals. Despite the name change, their commitment to 100% organic, plant-based meals remains unchanged, along with their dedication to sustainable practices and high-quality ingredients.
Their meals are completely oil-free, vegan, and gluten-free – a combination that emerged from the founders’ own plant-based journey.
The philosophy is to provide meals ‘as close to nature as possible’. It’s a thread that runs through all their meals, with no refined sugar, no gluten and no unfiltered water used in the cooking process.
Getting Started with Garden of Goodness
Garden of Goodness offers two main ordering approaches: build your own menu from their full selection, or choose a pre-designed meal plan tailored to specific health goals.
Selecting your meals is an easy affair, with options split up into categories:
- Essentials
- Comfort
- Gourmet
- Low Calorie
- Breakfast
Plus, you can add sides, snacks, or desserts at any point.
Most meals are available in multiple sizes, allowing you to choose between 300g, 450g, and 600g.
300g would be the standard portion size, then 450g portions are suitable for anyone looking to build muscle mass or improve recovery times.
With 600g portions ranging from 500 to 1200 calories, these would be more suited towards feeding 2 people.
Offering multi-portion meals is a huge selling point for couples who are supporting each other to eat healthier, plant-based meals.
Meal Plans
For those new to plant-based eating or seeking structured nutrition, Garden of Goodness offers comprehensive 5- or 7-day meal plans.
Each plan includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, and sides, carefully designed to support specific goals:
- Cleanse and Detox
- Weight Loss
- Back to Health
- Increase Muscle Mass
- Improve Performance
- Shred and Sculpt
Depending on your plan, Garden of Goodness will supply meals covering breakfast, lunch, dinner and a side for every day of the week.
Each meal plan also comes with a juicing box, fruit box and nuts/seeds to keep you going through the week.
Having your meals prepped and ready to eat for the entire week makes sticking to your daily calorie intake significantly easier. If you often struggle to hit your dietary goals, these plans could be a real game changer.
Meal Variety and Options
As of the time of writing this Garden of Goodness review, there are 18 meal options plus an additional 6 sides available.
In comparison to other prepared meal services who often have 30+ options, this is a very limited variety. There’s no way to avoid repeating meals each week, which might be a major issue for you. Personally, I’m quite happy eating the same meals as long as they’re enjoyable (spoiler: they are!).
Examples of some of the meals include:
- Ginger and Sesame Noodle Salad
- Teriyaki Tofu Stirfry
- Mac and Cheese
- Enchilada Pie
- Japanese Nourish Bowl
- Mung Bean Dahl
Unlike many vegan services that heavily rely on tofu, Garden of Goodness cleverly incorporates various protein sources through vegetables and pulses. Their innovative combinations deliver up to 30g of protein per meal while maintaining exciting flavors and textures.
The Garden of Goodness pantry is packed full of useful snacks and ingredients including seed mixes, coconut flakes, dried fruits, lentils, oats, and more. These are a great way to stock up on high-quality store cupboard ingredients as part of your weekly delivery.
Lastly, you can order one of the assorted boxes of fresh organic produce. These are:
- Veggie Box
- Juicing Box
- Fruit Box
The veggie and fruit boxes come in either ‘Standard’ or ‘Deluxe’ options. As I haven’t tried these as part of my orders, I couldn’t tell you what the difference is. My best (and most logical) guess is the deluxe option is bigger.
Special diets and food intolerances
I probably don’t need to reiterate here that all Garden of Goodness meals are 100% plant-based and suitable for a vegan diet. Their name gives that one away!
Each meal on the menu has a detailed ingredients list and nutritional guide. To make it easier to find suitable meals, the menu can be filtered to show meals that are free of soy, nuts, citrus, sesame, onion, grain, chili, or garlic.
I’ve never seen any other service provide such strong options for people with individual food or ingredient intolerances.
Unfortunately, and understandably, Garden of Goodness can’t make modifications to individual meals to remove ingredients.
Is Garden of Goodness suitable for Coeliacs?
Every meal cooked by Garden of Goodness is 100% gluten-free. There’s no gluten or wheat used during the handling, preparation, or cooking of meals.
I’ve been speaking to the team at Garden of Goodness regarding their plans for a full gluten-free kitchen and they recently upgraded their kitchen so it never handles any ingredients that may contain gluten.
That means that you can already consider Garden of Goodness suitable for coeliacs. They are currently working through accreditation with Coeliac Australia which will further add confidence to anyone following a gluten-free diet.
Delivery Options
Garden of Goodness delivers to select areas across Australia, covering most states except the Northern Territory.
I tested multiple postcodes across the country and found coverage particularly strong in metropolitan areas. You can quickly check availability for your location using their postcode checker tool.
The delivery dates available are fairly limited, with most places having only one day a week available. Here in metropolitan Sydney, I can choose between Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.
Delivery windows are broad (either 12am – 7am or 8am – 6pm), but this hasn’t been an issue in my experience. The meals arrive in well-insulated boxes designed to keep contents fresh for 6-8 hours after delivery.
Delivery costs $14.95 to all postcodes unless you qualify for free delivery when you spend over $200. That’s likely around 12 – 15 meals, which is a relatively fair bar to qualify for free delivery.
Orders need to be submitted or managed before 11pm on Sunday each week, which is when you’ll be charged for any subscription orders.
How much does Garden of Goodness Cost?
Garden of Goodness’ flexible sizing options and meal categories create a range of price points. Here’s a detailed breakdown of what you can expect to pay:
| Meal Category | 300g Meal Price | 450g Meal Price | 600g Meal Price |
| Essentials | $17.50 – $17.95 | $20.50 – $20.95 | $26.00 – $26.95 |
| Comfort | $17.95 – $18.95 | $20.50 – $22.50 | $26.50 |
| Gourmet | — | $18.95 – $24.95 | — |
| Low Calorie | $16.95 – $19.50 | $19.95 – $22.50 | $24.95 – $28.95 |
| Sides (2-3 portions) | $18.95 – $23.95 |
These prices place Garden of Goodness firmly towards the premium end of the market, as one of the most expensive prepared meal services.
In this case, I can see that prices are dictated by the quality of the ingredients. Sourcing fully organic seasonal ingredients can’t be cheap, so this is reflected in the cost of meals.
My top tip for saving money is to take advantage of the 600g meal prices if you’re sharing meals with someone else. Sharing the cost takes your cost per portion down by around 20% and makes Garden of Goodness more reasonably priced.
Produce Boxes start at $70 for a standard veggie box, through to $109 for a deluxe fruit box.
Meal Plans are priced at the total cost of each individual meal, with a small 5% discount for committing to a plan.
Featured Service
My Garden of Goodness Review Box
Now we’re on to the exciting part. What’s the Garden of Goodness experience actually like?
My first box was left in the lobby of my building at around 11am, right in the middle of the delivery window.
The box itself is fairly low-key and I had a slight issue where the tape hadn’t been applied to the edge of the box. It left a gap at the top but ultimately this wasn’t a major issue.
Garden of Goodness demonstrates their environmental commitment through thoughtful packaging choices:
- Sturdy cardboard construction
- Recyclable insulated liners
- Minimal plastic use
Pulling out all of my meals, I was immediately impressed by the vibrancy on display. Each meal looks great and I was super excited to dive in.
The meals all had between 6 to 8 days on their best-before dates, which is a pleasant surprise as no preservatives are used. I did eat some of the meals past the recommended date and had no issues, which ensures you have time to eat everything that’s delivered.
Meal Quality and Taste Test
As someone who enjoys both plant-based and traditional meals, I approached this review with high expectations. Garden of Goodness didn’t just meet them – they exceeded them.
These aren’t just “good for vegan meals” – they’re outstanding prepared meals that easily compete with the best non-vegan options I’ve tested.
Not once did I miss having meat in any of these meals, especially because Garden of Goodness never resorted to using inferior “meat-like” substitutes.
Here are some examples of the reheated meals:
The textures were impressively maintained across different ingredients – from perfectly tender vegetables to satisfyingly chewy grains. Each dish had its own distinct personality: the Mac and Cheese delivered creamy comfort without dairy, while the Ginger and Sesame Noodles offered a bright, zingy kick that would satisfy any takeaway craving.
I honestly can’t fault Garden of Goodness for how enjoyable their meals are.
Cooking the prepared meals
Each meal has reheating instructions printed on the label. These are the same for every meal:
- 3 minutes in the microwave
- 10 minutes in the oven.
- Gently heated on the stove.
I wish I had a bit more guidance on the recommended cooking method for each meal.
For example, I cooked the Enchilada Pie in the microwave, and it was delicious. However, I felt that reheating it in the oven would have given a crispier top and a more enjoyable meal.
I hope Garden of Goodness can adjust their labels to include a recommended cooking option for the best eating experience.
Managing Your Subscription
Garden of Goodness have clearly put a lot of time and energy into designing their site so it’s intuitive to use.
Individually skipping an order can be done at the click of a single button, or you can pause your subscription until a specified future date (a cool feature I wish more services offered!).
It’s also possible to order fortnightly deliveries instead of weekly.
Cancelling a subscription is incredibly easy. In fact, it’s probably too easy. Click on the cancel button and your subscription is immediately cancelled. It makes a refreshing change compared to services like HelloFresh who make you go through a 5-step cancellation process.
There’s also a 24-hour chat support window in case you have any questions. I’ve found them consistently helpful with any question I had.
My Overall Thoughts on Garden of Goodness
Garden of Goodness excels at providing a seamless prepared meals subscription. The website is incredibly easy to use, your subscription is simple to manage, the boxes are smartly packaged, and there’s a strong delivery network around Australia.
Then you have 100% organic meals using fresh, in-season ingredients that combine to make incredibly delicious meals. Enough to completely forget that meals don’t contain any dairy, gluten, meat, or oil.
The only hurdles to jump over are the price and variety of meals.
18 meals for lunch and dinner means eating the same meal once every 9 days, assuming the best-case scenario that you enjoy ever meal on the menu. There’s no doubt it would feel repetitive quickly.
Based on price alone, Garden of Goodness isn’t a service suitable for everyone. Buying their full meal plans covering breakfast, lunch and dinner could set you back over $2000 a month.
However, this is the premium you should expect to pay for the exceptionally high quality of ingredients. Having tried most of their menu, I firmly agree that they’re delivering meals ‘as close to nature as possible’.
Verdict: Highly Recommended for anyone prioritizing organic, plant-based nutrition and willing to invest in premium meal delivery. Rightfully taking their place as one of the top delivery services for vegans in Australia, as well as being fantastic for vegetarians.
Competing Services
The most similar service available currently would be Soulara. They’re the most popular plant-based meal delivery service in Australia. Whilst the ingredient quality isn’t as high as Garden of Goodness, they are a more affordable option for vegetarians and vegans.
Have you tried Garden of Goodness or other plant-based meal services? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments below. Did this review help you make a decision? Let me know!
