Well, that's it, I thought. No more gardening for me. We were moving into a much smaller house with an even smaller yard and there was no room for a garden. Sadly, I would truly miss my favorite pastime.

But then one of my new neighbors showed me her portable raised garden beds. She said that portable raised gardens were becoming quite the popular item with more people moving to smaller places, or looking for a way to grow their own produce in a limited space to save money. Instead of having to till out space in the yard, you simply build a garden bed that is portable, yet can produce as many flowers and veggies as you want. No more bending over, no more dealing with difficult soil problems. Everything was contained inside the tubs in the garden bed which could be moved with the sun if needed.

Plants love to breathe, and with a typical garden, you have rows and rows of plants that are easily stepped on. Besides, bending over or kneeling to dig weeds or tend my little seedlings had been killing my back. (I'm sure you gardeners understand.) By using a raised garden bed, which is designed to be worked from the outside rather than from the inside, there is no fear of tramping down the soil around the plants, or bruising the tender roots.

My neighbor went on to tell me she was actually able to plant more plants then she had in her old-fashioned garden, since there was no need to have everything in rows. She said she had to be careful about overplanting, though. The first year, all her plants grew much larger than her old-fashioned garden and she almost ran out of room with all her veggies because she had overplanted with the extra space.

As I watched my neighbor in her garden, I realized a huge benefit to using a raised bed for a summer garden is better drainage. If you live in an area with lots of summer rain, raised beds allow your garden to dry out between waterings, instead of sitting in excess water for hours or days on end. For areas dealing with a water shortage, a raised garden can save water because the water doesn't run off; it stays inside the planting tubs.

Looking at my neighbor's gardens, I thought -- did I want a garden bed that was portable, raised to my own comfortable gardening height, required no more bending over to plant, weed, look for pests, and the soil stays warmer and more productive for a longer period of time? You bet. I bid my neighbor "Happy Gardening," and I was off to find plans for my own portable raised garden bed.