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Simple home gardens can have a significant impact on our lives, health, and the environment around us. Let's chat about it!
The Humble Home Garden
Now when someone talks about their home garden, what do you imagine? Do you think of a forest of tomatoes? Home gardens can range from apartment balconies to lush acreage outside their backdoor, it really depends on what someone has available to them at the time.
When I began my gardening journey, I had a window sill. It was the only space in my apartment that had sunlight pouring in. Eventually I moved to an apartment with a sunlit balcony I turned into a mini jungle, and since then I've now moved into a house with an just under and acre I can play with.
Did you know gardening may not just be a simple hobby? It may have a much more important role in our health and the environment around us. Gardening has been studied and proven to show signs of health benefits for not just us, but for mother nature too. Let's see what they are.
The Effects Of Gardening: Physical Benefits
Doctors have studied gardening, and much like yoga, fishing, and hiking, gardening can benefit our bodies in a sustainable way.
Physical Effects May Include:
Sunlight exposure lowering blood pressure
Increased Vitamin D Levels
Improves Immune System
Improves Lung Capacity & Function
Gardening Tasks (weeding, planting, raking, etc.) compare to an aerobic workout in a gym.
Lowers risk of dementia, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer
Improves Balance, Flexibility, Strength
Eating food grown from your garden improves your health with organically grown veggies, fruits, greens, and herbs.
Gardening and working outside, even if it's 30 minutes a day, can significantly impact your physical health in the long run. Depending on what you like growing the fruits of your labor can make an impact as well. Many herbs and veggies have real life saving nutrients in them.
For my gardens, I grow a lot of herbal tea, vegetables, and flowers. Herbal tea is known to have lots of health benefits that change from each tea blend created. While vegetables grown commercially oftentimes have pesticides sprayed on them, which leaches into our food no matter how much we clean them once they're purchased. By growing them yourself, you know exactly what is used around your food.
The Effects Of Gardening: Mental Benefits
Today we are seeing a massive increase in mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, diseases related to high stress levels, and more. Now, I am no doctor so don't take this blog as medical advice. In my personal experience being outdoors in nature has saved my mental health. Even when I'm exhausted and stressed from the small business I run, going outside in the sunshine to pick herbs and produce I grew myself offers a sense of deep accomplishment.
Mental Effects May Include:
Building self-esteem
Building confidence in your own abilities
Builds a strong routine
Offers social connections and community involvement
Lowers symptoms of Depression, Anxiety, and Stress
Offers a strong sense of grounding
Builds patience
Improves Life-Satisfaction
Lowers symptoms of PTSD
Improves Attention Retention, tackling the side effects of ADHD
Gardening can open a doorway into healing mentally as well as physically. Being out in the sunshine, while you think is helping with a tan and vitamin D absorption, actually is working hard in your body to tackle the chemical imbalance that can happen during depression. Ever heard of seasonal depression? When I was living in the PNW, seasonal depression was a massive factor in everyone's day-to-day lives. When I moved to Tennessee and started my little farm, being out in the sunshine everyday drastically improved my emotional health as well as physical.
Gardening can open a doorway into healing mentally as well as physically
As someone who struggled with PTSD, I've tried many avenues of natural healing. I became a painter, a writer, an athlete, anything that would help my mind heal. It took about 8 years for me to finally overcome a lot of symptoms that frankly hindered my way of life. When I stumbled upon gardening as a 'quarantine hobby' I opened a new world for myself.
Getting outside in the sunshine everyday helped me breathe better, feel better, and look better. Taking care of something as delicate as a plant (And keeping my cat from eating them) gave me a sense of accomplishment. I'm one of the most impatient people I know, so waiting days or months just to see plants thriving outside my window taught me that all good things come with a little bit of patience and hard work.
The Effects Of Gardening: Environmental Benefits
Taking care of our environment around us doesn't necessarily need protests in the streets or artwork ruined in a museum. Putting our health first often times leads to taking care of our environment, when we pay attention to the local farmers growing our food, and how ethically sourced something in our life is, it tends to lead us down a rabbit hole. When you start a garden, no matter how small, you are helping make a big impact on the world around you.
We can't be responsible for the entire world, that weight is a bit too heavy for our shoulders, but we can be responsible for the small part of the world we live in
Environmental Effects May Include:
Supporting Pollinators - providing flowers and habitats for bees, butterflies, and more.
Cleaning the air around you
Protecting wildlife
Reducing waste through composting
Shortening the supply chain of your groceries
Reducing your carbon footprint
Healing the soil
Providing structure in the soil to avoid landslides
Reducing the chemicals sprayed on lawns that soak into our water supply
By starting a garden, no matter how small, you can make a difference. Most lawns in the US provide no support for pollinators, and the chemicals sprayed (weed killer mainly) oftentimes harm the wildlife. Many of those chemicals get washed away during rain, soaking into the ground beneath it or washing away into our sewers and water supplies.
Plants clean our air! I see a lot of environmental people claim trees are our only way of cleaning our air. While trees do a fantastic job of it, there is a much more attainable way for people to help tackle smog and contaminants in the air. All plants feed off carbon dioxide. If you grow herbs on your window sill, or grow tomatoes on your balcony, they work just as hard to pull carbon dioxide out of the air. In return, your garden has a higher concentration of clean oxygen.
Now I wouldn't consider myself too environmentally conscience. Mostly I care about removing chemicals from my diet (pesticides for example) and eating healthier. However, if you are looking to take better care of the environment around you I highly recommend looking into some gardening. Until next time!
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