Why You Should Grow a Garden: The Benefits of Gardening
Content Updated on April 6, 2009
When spring comes around, the world wakes up, and something within us longs to get outside and enjoy a beautiful piece of nature. Walking through a garden can lift your spirits, but starting a garden of your own can change your life in so many ways. Here's a few reasons why.
Just Start Gardening: No Experience Necessary
I know there are gardening shows, gardening books, gardening websites, and even gardening schools taught by gardening experts, but really you don't need to worry about any of that to get started. I started gardening in the desert (where I grew up) when I was an adolescent. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know anything about light levels, day length, proper temperatures, soil types, etc. People criticized by lack of experience and knowledge and told me that my efforts to grow a garden using my naive methods wouldn't work.
Nevertheless, the seeds I planted in the clay desert soil and watered daily sprouted and grew into plants that added vegetables, fruits, and herbs to our table. I even grew alfalfa for our pet bunny.
Yes, some seeds didn't sprout. Some plants grew but quickly died. Some of the techniques I had seen on gardening television shows didn't adapt to plants I was working with and made me appear rather silly. But it was fun, and I learned a lot from my gardening experiences. Plus, there's nothing quite like the pride you get from eating a cucumber or creating a flower arrangement from plants you grew yourself.
Gardening Is an Inexpensive Hobby
Gardening is one of the few fulfilling hobbies that you can do even if you're poor. True, you could spend thousands of dollars on gardening, but you don't have to. There are lots of ways you can save money while gardening, and you can help the environment at the same time. Here are a few ideas to get you started without spending much cash:
- Shop at thrift stores and yard sales for equipment
- Recycle/Re-purpose non-gardening supplies (e.g. baking pans, kitchen utensils, egg cartons, etc.) into gardening equipment
- Make your own compost and compost tea instead of using fertilizer
- Try saving the seeds from fresh fruits and vegetables that you've purchased at the grocery store and use those to get started (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it's always fun to try)
- Try sprouting potatoes or onions from your grocery store.
- Trade seeds with neighbors (or even with gardening buddies online)
- Ask your neighbors if you can collect seeds or cuttings from their plants
Save Money by Growing Deciduous Shade Trees
Deciduous shade trees (i.e. trees that lose their leaves in winter) are wonderful multitasker. They look beautiful when their leaves have grown in. They add an autumn feel to any yard after their leaves have fallen (and that's great for decorating it for Halloween). They can be lit up with holiday lights during winter. And many produce gorgeous flowers during the spring. (No need to spend money on fake seasonal decorations.) And they can reduce the cost of your energy bill, too.
During the summer, shade trees produce shade. If the shade falls on your windows or even just generally over your house, they block the sun's radiation, and thus reduce the heat in your home. Now that your home is cooler, your air conditioner and all those fans you have everywhere won't need to work so hard, saving you a few dollars from your electric bill. You might even be able to turn your air conditioner off completely, and that can save you hundreds of dollars.
Just be sure you find a deciduous shade tree that grows well in your area without requiring large amounts of water, so you don't see your water bill go up.
Save Money by Growing Your Own Food
If you happen to be a poor gardening, then you'll be happy to know that gardening can help you save money. When money gets tight, whether it be because of personal problems or world economic problems, gardening can help you save money at the grocery store. Of course, this only works if you aren't spending excessive amounts on fancy irrigation systems or expensive equipment. Grow your own herbs, vegetables, fruits, edible seeds, and nuts.
Growing Your Own Foods = Eating More Fruits and Vegetables
Having a fruit and vegetable garden can help you lose weight, fight cancer, manage diabetes, and crawl out of depression. How? It compels you to eat those juice fruits and vegetables that you grew yourself. And when you eat from your harvest, you'll discover something amazing: it tastes better than the stuff you buy at the store. You may suddenly realize that the reason you didn't like such healthy foods before is that the store-bought ones simply didn't taste as wonderful as something grown with love, picked at the peak of ripeness, and eaten fresh. You may even like it so much that you'll start looking forward to your daily dose of edible plants.
Know Exactly What Was Used On Your Food
I'm a huge advocate of avoiding toxic things that make you sick. When you buy produce from the grocery store, you are taking a leap of faith, hoping that whatever industrial insecticide was sprayed on your food won't cause cancer and that any harvested crops weren't packed using dirty equipment soiled with ecoli infested rat droppings. (Most of them aren't, but sometimes it happens.) When you grow your own food, you have the satisfaction of knowing that the organic compost you used to fertilize your crops likely won't harm you or the environment, and you get to control how clean or dirty you want gardening tools or food storage containers to be.
Get Your Daily Dose of Exercise (while Being Productive)
One of the excuses I often hear from people (myself included) for not exercising is that it feels like they're wasting time. "I can't spend 30 minutes just walking around. I have stuff to do!" But gardening is one of those wonderful "productive" forms of exercise, especially if you don't use lots of power tools to do the work for you. When you garden, you have to do things like dig, walk, carry things, push wheelbarrows, pull carts, reach up, bend down, and so forth. All of that movement is EXERCISE.
Tasks that require muscular strength helps build stronger muscles and increases bone density, both of which decrease injuries like torn muscles and broken bones. Movements that require stretching or reaching improve flexibility, balance, and range of motion, which means you'll move more gracefully and be less likely to suffer from a fall. And anything that gets your heart pumping or make you a bit out of breath helps build your cardiovascular system, which reduces your chances of developing things like cardiovascular disease and increases your overall energy levels. Let's not forget that all of this work burns calories as well, so gardening can even help you get rid of excess fat and lose weight.
And when you're done with your gardening workout, you'll have nutritious foods to harvest and eat, making you even healthier. It's like one big cycle of healthy living!
Improve Your Immunity
Exposure to sunlight helps your body synthesize vitamin D. Vitamin D is an essential part of the immune system (and serves many other functions as well). If you don't have adequate vitamin D in your body, you can expect your immune system decline.
Another way to build up your immune system is to expose yourself to small amounts of fungus, bacteria, viruses, etc. Now, nobody is suggesting that you should expose yourself directly to HIV or start licking public toilets, but the germs you greet when you play in the dirt (umm, I mean soil for you gardening experts) can give a boost to your immune system, the same way that immunizations and allergy shots do. Plus, some of these beneficial dirt germs that attach to our bodies can actually work for us by killing off the harmful germs and keeping our bodies' microbiological ecosystems balanced. (Yet another reason kids should be out playing in the dirt, too.)
Getting out into the fresh air gets you away from the accumulation of germs and toxic gases (many of which we don't realize are there) produced by the chemicals used in our home and in the products we buy (like furniture, carpeting, etc.). Outside, these germs and gases spread out and are eventually (in many cases) filtered out by natural plant processes, which reduces our exposure to them. Thus, getting out in the fresh air could keep you healthier.
Practice Meditation and Spirituality Development with Nature
In addition to boosting your nutritional and physical fitness, gardening can help your mental fitness by serving as a relaxing time of meditation.
Gardening meditation (as I like to call it) happens during those slower moments when you're picking dead leaves or spent blooms off your plants, sitting next to a raised bed and pulling out weeds, or patiently pulling your hose from plant to plant and giving them a drink of water. These are the times when you get to think about being in the moment, feeling the weather, focusing on your breath, and pondering about the meaning of life (themes like renewal, rebirth, and personal growth are the ones that often appear in my mind while gardening). It also helps you feel more connected to the earth and the processes of nature as well as giving you a sense of connection to your ancestors (many of whom most certainly spent time working in the fields to produce food for their families and the community). This sense of connection adds to your overall feelings of belonging and purpose, both of which are primal desires in the human species.
Gardening meditation is an excellent way to start or end your day (or both), and it's perfect for giving yourself mini-vacations any time there's unwanted chaos.
Create a Beautiful Piece of Living Artwork
Humans have a built in desire to create. It's probably one of the reasons why our species has evolved as it did. We create tools, buildings, clothing, toys, and so many other items that the list could go on forever. But just making an object isn't enough. We also want to make it beautiful. We add decoration, remove debris, cover over defects, and so forth. It is the inner artist of the human mind, an artist that each of us has inside of us.
Gardening is one of the few forms of art that you can share with anyone who happens to walk past your garden. With gardening, your inner artist gets to work with color, texture, light (e.g. spot lights and holiday lights), darkness (e.g. shadows and shade), height, width, solid structures (e.g. rocks, benches, and twisting branches), free form structures (e.g. water fountains and groups of waving flowers), sounds (e.g. wind chimes and rustling leaves), and scents. It's an all encompassing art form that changes with the daily rotation of the earth and seasons.
Improve Your Relationships, Friendships, and Local Community
There's something about gardening that draws people together. Go into any group of people, and mention that you have a garden. Chances are, somebody will share your gardening interest, giving you an instant conversation topic. Speak loudly enough for other people to hear, and eventually somebody will wander by, hear your conversation, and feel compelled to join in.
When your neighbors see you gardening, they're likely to stop by and start a conversation about it. That alone is beneficial because it gives you a chance to get to know your neighbors, to develop friendships, and even a source of help if an emergency happens. Strong, beautiful communities also tend to have lower crime rates, so you may even be adding a layer of protection for your home and family as well as for your fellow neighbors.
If your garden produces food of any kind or flowers worthy of putting into arrangements, your garden can also be a source of gifts, and gifts almost always add a nice boost to any sort of relationship (e.g. professional, neighborly, romantic, etc.).
Enjoy Pets You Don't Need a Pet-Sitter For
If you love animals but can't have pets, then a garden is a sure way to fulfill your desires to have non-human animals in your life. By working with different plant varieties and installing water features and feeders, you can attract a wide variety of wild animals to your home. You can gaze out your window whenever you want and adore birds, butterflies, squirrels, deer, or whatever animals live near you. You can listen to them, watch them, take photographs of them, and even name them. But you'll never need to hire a pet-sitter to watch them when you go out of town. You don't need to worry about running out of food for them because they'll still manage to find something to eat if you personally don't feed them. You don't need to let them out in the middle of the night for a potty break. And you'll never have to worry about them damaging the furniture or flooring inside your home.Play with Your Kids and Teach Them in the Ultimate Classroom
Kids love playing in the dirt, rolling in the grass, planting seeds, cutting flowers, trimming overgrown bushes, and chasing bugs. A garden is also a place where the imagination can run wild. But gardens are also some of the world's best classrooms.
In the garden, your child can learn about science in every form. Obviously, kids can learn about plants in a garden, but they can also learn about animals, general biology, microbiology, ecosystems, geology, meteorology (i.e. weather), physics (e.g. how water flows or how leverage can help you move a big rock), engineering (e.g. constructing a trellis), chemistry (e.g. soil ph and nutrients in the soil), and environmental impacts of pollution.
Give your kid a camera and they'll enjoy learning about photography as they take pictures of pebbles, plants, and landscapes. Give them an easel, and they'll learn about perspective and color as they sketch and paint the garden. They can even learn about aviation if planes flying overhead, automobiles if cars drive by, and astronomy if you sit in the garden at night and watch the stars (telescopes and cameras come in handy for this).
Every child should enjoy a daily frolic in the garden.
Turn Your House into a Mansion (or at least Improve the Appearance of Your Home)
It's no secret that an attractive yard adds to the beauty of your home. This can earn you a bigger profit if you're selling your house, but even if you don't plan on moving out of your home, a beautiful yard and a beautiful house can make your ordinary life feel luxurious and heavenly. Who needs to win the lottery when you're already living in a paradise?
Develop Survival Skills
While it's rather unusual to find yourself in a survival situation in which somebody utters, "If only somebody knew how to garden" (and that's when I imagine Garden Girl, the super hero, jumping out of the bushes with a picture of a shovel on her chest), but gardening can still give you great survival skills, such as:
- recognize edible plants and edible plant parts
- recognize poisonous plants
- learn where to find snails, slugs, worms, grubs, ants, and scorpions for survival food (yuck, but if you're starving...)
- learn where to dig to find water
- learn to build a basic shelter just by knowing how to build a basic trellis
Help the Environment
By growing plants instead of paving over your yard, covering your yard with rocks, or installing something like artificial turf, you help clean the air, produce more oxygen, reduce greenhouse gasses, clean the water before it gets to watersheds, and reduce runoff into storm drains and streams. (And you thought you were just planting flowers.)
Plus, if you grow an organic garden (i.e. without using synthetic pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, antibiotics, or fertilizers), your garden can help keep toxic chemicals out of our water, air, and living spaces. If you use natural compost rather than fast acting fertilizers that end up in water ways and cause algae blooms, you can protect the balance of entire ecosystems. Creating compost out of your garden waste rather than burning it helps keep the air clean, and by not throwing yard debris into the trash can, you're reducing landfill piles, too.
If you grow your own food at your own home, your food doesn't need to be shipped from hundreds or thousands of miles away just to get to your dining table, saving tons of fuel and eliminating tons of greenhouse gasses and pollution, and you won't need to make as many trips to the grocery store either, which will also reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse emissions.
So What Are You Waiting For?
Gardening has so many benefits, it's no wonder the lifestyle of our species has long been based on agriculture. It saves you money, makes the world a better place, gives you a healthier body, and leaves you feeling happier than you were before. It may possibly be the best physical, mental, and social therapy every. Whether you have your own yard outside your front door, a community garden down the street, a small dirt patch in front of your apartment complex, or just a window box, getting in touch with your inner gardener can change your life. So go plant something! Your life will be better for it.
Related Items
Similar topics
See other Kristen's Guide topics in this category.