Recreational gardening is supposed to be a refreshing and relaxing experience, to bring you close to nature and enjoy the fruits of her bounty. It's certainly not meant to be work. Leave back-breaking labor to the farmers and step away from your garden patch. Deck planter boxes aren't just ideal for gardeners with limited space; they optimize the gardening experience in many ways that traditional gardens cannot.

One of the built-in benefits of deck planter boxes is their ability to move around. Get your plants away from the back corners of your garden and up onto the action of your deck or patio. Treat your party guests to the scent of seasonal, colorful blooms. Grab some fresh basil or mint to spice up salad. You can reap the benefits of nature and have it all right at your fingertips. Plus, planters can be arranged and rearranged according to size, color and more so your outdoor furniture will never look tired or stale.

Then there's the mess. After all, you are playing in the dirt. And gardens are just asking for chaos, unlike compact deck planter boxes. Think about it: if you're digging your own garden, you're first going to tear up part of your lawn. Then you will need to buy a large quantity of topsoil, which, odds are, will be trucked over to your house, dumped carelessly on your driveway, and then left for you to deal with.

From there it's up to you to cart the messy load back and forth via wheelbarrow, half of which will be spilled in transit. Once that's complete, you get the good fortune of getting down and dirty, knees in the mud, while clods of dirt get flicked onto your pants, clothes and eventually get tracked inside. Planters limit the amount of soil you will need (less to buy!) and then compartmentalizes it into small, easy to work with sections. No muss, no fuss.

When it comes to gardening, digging around in the dirt is not a job for the weak. The act of bending over for hours at a time in the merciless sun can be murder on backs, necks and knees. And if your soil isn't arable, you will need to break up the earth, dig holes, fertilize, mulch, etc. All of this is arduous work that requires hoes and shovels. Deck planter boxes, on the other hand, can be planted on potting tables, or even indoors inside the shade and air conditioning. Potting tables are expressly designed for convenient gardening projects, where you can work on and repot plants while standing up, not bending over.

Deck planter boxes appeal to the Type A personality in us all by playing up to our inner control freaks. With planters, you can micromanage water and sunlight levels, along with soil content by separating different plants with different needs into their own planters. With a regular garden, you only have one soil type, the same amount of rainwater and one type of lighting. With good luck, your plants will all be hearty enough to these variable conditions, but the chances are good that one or two won't survive.

With planters, you can separate those plants that require direct sunlight, partial sunlight, and shade as well as those that take more or less water. Once they're separated, they can be moved to those areas of your deck which befit their requirements, and then moved again if those environments change.

There's also the luxury of being able to grow all sorts of different plants in separate deck planter boxes that would naturally never survive in the same soil conditions as one another. Some plants, for instance, require different nutrients, or thrive in a more or less acidic soil composition. A desert garden that uses sand instead of soil can have you growing cactuses just a few feet away from your tropical flowers planter.