The best place to seek God is in a garden.  ~ George Bernard Shaw, The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, 1932

For a hobby you may opt to collect coins and stamps or decide to dabble in gardening. As long as a hobby doesn’t harm others or the environment, it is welcome, but what if your hobby helps you cut-down your monthly domestic bills and improves your overall wellbeing? Well, one should ideally jump at it. The hobby of gardening is such, has two sides to it. You can’t perhaps count the benefits on your fingers, but at the same time, scares the living daylights out of many. History has been witness to man’s continuous effort in simplifying things, particularly so in the last century or so. Gardening too, isn’t all that scary as you might think and evolved to an extent that it is within the reach of an amateur now.

One of the greatest outcomes of this evolution is the concept of raised bed gardens. It is a concept of modern day gardening, where the soil is raised above the surrounding ground upto about waist height and enclosed by a frame made of wood or concrete blocks. This concept lends many advantages over the traditional row gardening.

Raised bed gardens are versatile, and easy to use. One can customize the soil mixtures according to what is grown in raised beds, as well as improve the soil drainage for the plants. A raise of a mere eight inches above the ground level can greatly improve drainage. Since one doesn’t have to actually step into the raised bed, the soil is not compacted and the roots can grow easily. Raised bed garden warms more quickly in spring, which enables the gardener to start work on the soil, earlier. In raised bed gardens the plants are spaced more close to each other than in conventional row gardens. This close spacing helps create a microclimate in which moisture is conserved and weed growth suppressed. The old and frail need not have to bend over to tend the garden in case of a raised bed garden.

It is relatively easier to create a raised bed garden in one’s own backyard. Indulging in this hobby of raised bed garden can not only be engaging and interesting, but also extremely beneficial. One can grow some of the essential vegetables free of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and be sure that all the products are absolutely fresh and safe.

The internet has a great deal of information on raised bed gardens. There are websites which instruct people on building their own raised bed garden. For those who wish to start their own raised bed garden, Danny Brown offers a low cost eBook at LearnRaisedBedGardening.com. This eBook titled, "Raised Bed Gardening 101" unravels the secrets of making a raised bed garden, including planning the layout of the garden, maintaining a compost, using natural fertilizers and organic pesticides, and maintaining the garden. Along with this eBook, the website offers two additional interesting eBooks at no extra cost.

If ever you thought of trying your hand at gardening, and ran scared of the effort and knowledge required, there aren’t many excuses anymore.