Gardening is one of the most common hobbies in America. Around 70 million households participate in some type of gardening activity, such as planting flower beds, lawn care, or raising vegetables.
Apart from being a fun hobby and a great way of making your home good, there are also several health benefits of gardening. If you are considering taking up gardening, here’s how this activity can benefit your overall well-being.
1. Gardening Burns a Lot of Calories
Gardening is both a vigorous and moderately intense physical exercise that can help you burn up to 330 or more calories in one hour. This is equivalent to doing yard such as cutting grass, raking, digging, shoveling, and chopping wood.
Working in a garden requires the use of major muscles in the body and will help you lose weight and also improve your sleep.
A 2013 study by the American Journal of Public Health also reveals that people who actively garden, such as participating in a community gardening program or tending to their home gardens and flower beds, have a lower Body Mass Index (BMI) than those who don’t.
2. It Sharpens Your Brain
Apart from being a good exercise for your body, gardening is also a healthy workout for the brain. Exercises hugely improve the brain’s cognitive functions. Tending to your home garden can spur growth in the brain’s memory-related nerves.
This is especially because the activity involves learning about new techniques and plants, which can help improve a person’s memory.
Horticultural therapy has been proven to be an effective treatment for people with dementia. Several doctors encourage patients with dementia or any other condition related to memory to take up gardening.
3. Gardening Can Make You Happier
The acts of growing plants or flowers, seeing them flourish, and even eating from your garden can boost your mood and self-esteem. Gardening can increase your quality of life and also reduce mood disturbances.
Seeing how good your yard or garden looks will encourage you to be more involved, which can also drop your anxiety levels. Also, you will be able to adorn your garden with unique garden decorations that can lift up your moods whenever you spend time outdoors.
4. Gardening Promotes a Healthy Eating Habit
Suppose you choose to grow organic vegetables and herbs. In that case, you will have a healthy supply of fresh and healthy produce. With your own garden, you will use the right fertilizers and a pesticide, which ensures you grow organic vegetables.
Additionally, you will spend less on groceries and this will encourage you and your family to eat more vegetables. Since Dietary Guidelines recommend eating at least two cusps of fresh and healthy vegetables, you will get the necessary nutrients you need to stay healthy and reduce the risk of chronic diseases.
5. Gardening Can Relieve Stress
Gardening is a mood booster that can also help reduce symptoms of stress, depression, and anxiety. Apart from home gardening, several nursing homes, hospitals, and rehab centers use gardening as a type of rehabilitation.
This type of therapy is especially important for patients recovering from surgeries, strokes, injuries, substance abuse, and other conditions. Horticultural therapy programs can help build a person’s mental and physical health.
It can teach patients a new skill, keep them occupied and help restore self-confidence. Additionally, this activity can control and prevent high blood pressure because it can help a person stay calm.
6. Help Your Body Fight Disease
Building an outdoor garden is very good for your skin. The skin needs sunlight to make vitamin D, which is a vital nutrient in your body. When you spend half an hour in the sun, you can get around 8,000 to 50,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D in your body.
This depends on the color of your skin and how much skin you expose to the sun. As you garden and allow your skin to absorb vitamin D, you will have stronger bones and an excellent immune system. This will lower the risk of conditions such as:
- Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
- Prostate cancer
- Breast cancer
- Multiple sclerosis
- Bladder cancer
- Colorectal cancer
Having a low vitamin D level exposes you to a higher risk of developing metabolic syndrome, psoriasis flares, dementia, and type II diabetes.
7. Builds a Source of Community
School, family, and community gardens provide the best platforms for meeting new people and interacting with them. This can help improve your self-esteem, moods, and general health.
Working in a garden with people of different abilities, ages and background is an excellent way to garden. To benefit from group therapy, exchange ideas and learn new things, join a community gardening group and flourish the community and your home garden at the same time.
8. Increases Strength and Hand Coordination
Having a strong and powerful grip is crucial. Hand strength, coordination, and flexibility are necessary for everyday tasks such as picking up children, carrying packages, and opening jars.
Gardening provides one of the best ways of strengthening hand muscles and improving motor skills. A few minutes of weeding or planting can help offset strain caused by repetitive motion like phone swiping or typing.
9. Helps to Manage Eco-Anxiety
Watching the gradual and some unconfirmed effects of climate change can increase a person’s stress levels and also create a sense of guilt. Eco-anxiety, which is a sense of feeling powerless to do anything about climate change, can affect a person’s health.
Gardening can help combat these negative feelings and restore your hope for the future. Planting seeds, seeing them to fruition, and learning more about the environment will help you carry and spread hope.
Learn the Health Benefits of Gardening
Gardening allows you to get outside, make your outdoors beautiful and also interact with other gardeners. It will make you more in charge of your health and beautiful surroundings. You will get to enjoy several health benefits of gardening.
If you are ready to start a garden and enjoy the outdoors, we can help you get the best planters, decors, and more items to make your outdoors beautiful. Contact us for unique home garden solutions.
