"How Gardening Can Improve Your Mental and Physical Well-being"
- mp50081
- Apr 22, 2024
- 3 min read
Gardening is a popular activity during the warmer months. Have you wondered about some of its benefits? Let’s explore the benefits of gardening!
Gardening In A Nutshell
Gardening involves the tending and cultivating of a garden, especially for fun.
Having a garden not only involves growing ornamental plants but also fruits and vegetables.
Ornamental plants include flowers, ferns as well as lavender.
Popular fruits and vegetables grown in gardens include cucumbers, kale, lettuce as well as tomatoes.
How To Get Started?!
How you start your garden matters. It will help you to reap the full benefits of gardening by figuring out what climate zone you live in.
For example, if you live in New England the best time to start a garden is late April to the middle of May.
Gardening too early put your garden at risk for frost damage. Also, snowstorms can happen in New England as late as the middle of April.
After figuring out what climatic zone you live in, decide what you’re going to grow. In New England, cooler weather vegetables such as cabbage as well as lettuce do well.
Look for a spot to start your garden, ideally it’d be a spot that receives at least 7 hours of full sun a day. Also, determine how well the shot drains after watering it.
Check your soil to make sure there’s the right balance of sand, clay, silt as well as organic matter. Also, you can run a test to check for ph, if it’s too high or too low your plants won’t grow.
Finally, decide whether you want to grow from seeds or use seedlings. Depending on how much knowledge or patience you have to grow from seeds, it might work better for you to plant seedlings.
Let’s Explore The Benefits Of Gardening
After starting your garden, you’ll reap the benefits of gardening with patience and dedication.
Benefits Of Gardening Include:
Exposure To Vitamin D:
Some of the overlooked benefits of gardening include vitamin D exposure.
Working outside in your garden allows you to get some sun. As a result, your body is receiving vitamin D to help your bones as well as your immune system.
Also, growing certain vegetables help you get vitamin D. They include leafy greens such spinach as well as kale.
Helps You Develop A Growth Mindset:
If you’re not good at gardening right away, that ok.
Gardening puts you in a growth mindset, you’re always learning and looking for new ways to improve your garden.
Also, gardening means a lot of trial and error. It involves playing with different methods until you find one that works for you.
Gardening Is Good For The Heart:
Since gardening is a relaxing as well as an enjoyable activity, it’s good for the heart.
Gardening involves a lot of bending, digging, lifting, reaching as well as stretching. As a result, you build and tone muscle, strengthen your bones as well as improve blood circulation.
Working on your garden is a form of aerobic exercise, it gives your heart a mild workout. Also, gardening can lower your blood pressure and lower your risk for heart problems.
Increases Access To Healthier Food Choices:
Gardening increases your access to healthier food choices. It helps you eat more fruits and vegetables, because you’re growing them yourself.
Having a garden helps you decide what fertilizers as well as pesticides come in contact with your food. Also, you can wait for vegetables to ripen before harvesting them. By doing this, you’ll benefit from the nutrients that come with ripening.
Fruits and vegetables from your garden are rich in vitamins A, B, C, D and many other nutrients.
Improves Mental Health:
Gardening has many benefits for your mental health.
Having a garden helps you release stress. As a result, you might feel less anxious and depressed when life gets hard.
There’s evidence that gardening strengthens your brain. It helps you improve your focus and recover from mental fatigue faster. Also, older adults are less likely to develop dementia.
Helps The Environment:
Despite your garden being man made, it has many environmental benefits.
Plants act as air cleaners, they absorb carbon dioxide as well as many air pollutants. At the same time, plants also release clean oxygen and fragrance.
Having a dense cover of plants and mulch holds your soil in place. As a result, the amount of soil erosion is reduced and sediment is kept out of streams.
Have You Ever Gotten Into Gardening?
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