Gardening isnormally considered as a pleasure of those who have free time. It is also considered as an activity that improves the quality of life by adding a green space in your living area. To save time and effort after long working days, most of us tend to spend time for some lazy leisure activities.
However, you might want to reconsider it again. Gardening may replace your current weekend activities due to its health benefits.
Since we were in kindergarten, our teachers taught us to appreciate every tree around us because it gives us oxygen to breath. Now, when I have built my own family, I try to create a beautiful garden so that my kids have some green space to play around in an eco-friendly environment.
However, when I started gardening, I found that the benefit of gardening does not stop at adding a small green space for the city, but also giving some health benefits that we often do not think about. Here are some motivations that could encourage you to do gardening:
Creating safe and sound food resources
Food safety has become a concern nowadays. In fact, a survey conducted in 2015 had shown that the concern about food safety has increased massively, about 50% of consumers, comparing with the statistic in 2010.
Among 1000 respondents, many of them are likely to buy ingredients from farmers rather than in supermarkets. You may want to change food suppliers from mass merchandiser to your own backyard. Indeed, seed vegetables that you love in your own garden, growing them by yourself, controlling any elements that you put on your plants, and enjoying the result at harvest season.
According to University of Minnesota, you can maintain a certain amount of vegetables harvested in spring and summer for winter. That means we just take one or two seasons to seed and grow plants, but we can save enough veggies to use for the rest of the year. Here are some easy-to-grow vegetables that you might like: pumpkins, kale, cabbage, Brussel sprouts, garlic, and squash.
Planting veggies and fruits actually encourages people taking in more vitamins and minerals than usually. As we have spent so much time on our works, we would love to enjoy our own works, instead of spending money to buy it. As the result, our health will be improved thanks to the nutrients we add more every day.
Controlling stress level
Sometimes, life is hard, and stress has become a part of our life. Somehow, we can control it by gardening. Instead of enjoying normal and simple relaxing activities such as reading, listening to music, watching movies, let go out and plant!
In fact, a study in Netherlands has proven that gardening can help you deal with stress better than normal leisure activities; this outdoor activity can help you to get a better mood faster. Just 30 minutes of gardening, cortisol – the main hormone creating stress will be decreased considerably.
On the other hand, somehow, gardening can be a solution that help people with mental disorders too. Some researchers have confirmed that this is “an effective and affordable way” to deal with it.
Improving body’s strength with mowing
Among all gardening practices, mowing seems the one that takes much effort from us. On the other hand, you can consider mowing as a true exercise at the gym. With a pushing the reel lawn mower, you are actually burning about 130 calories in just 30 minutes. Meanwhile 30 minutes in gym can be a “nightmare” for some of us, 30 minutes of mowing in your lovely garden does not seem so hard, and despitewe have used lots of effort too.
Not just cutting down exceed calories, mowing is also a kind of cardiovascular exercise recommended by the Franklin Institute too. When you push a lawn mower by yourself, the entire body works leading to improvement of heart health. Or even using a self-propelled lawn mower, you still have a chance to walk around your garden and improve your health.
Strengthening the immune system
You might be surprised when seeing this one on the health benefits list. Some of us do not really believe that dirty works can offer a great benefit like this. In fact, several friendly bacteria and germ in soil are actually good for your health, especially for children.
They work similar to vaccine, which helps us to improve immune system, decrease the levels of anxiety and symptoms of allergies, asthma in the future.
Besides, outdoor activities are also solutions that help children to improve their immune system. Those activities help them to get familiar with the change of their bodies and environment. As the result, they can avoid common diseases due to weather changes.
Conclusion
If you have not gotten your own garden, now we believe that you would have the reasons to create one. Gardening is not only an outdoor activity that makes your home more beautiful. Just a small garden, with lots of efforts and love on it, you also get so many health benefits not just for you but for the whole family too. You may not find a better gift than this one to give to your family.