The Health Benefits of Maintaining a Home Garden
When one hears the words 'gardens' and 'health' one naturally assumes that vegetable gardens are being discussed. But maintaining any sort of garden brings its own health benefits, as it isn't just the fresh and preservative free produce that vegetable gardens provide that can benefit a family's overall health, but also the exercise and creative challenge of working in any kind of home garden that adds yet further to one's physical, emotional, and mental well-being.
All that hoeing, raking, pulling, watering, bending, and carting things to-and-fro is a good source of steady, low-impact exercise that is especially ideal for older gardeners. And not only is such exercise more fun than trudging mindlessly on a treadmill for hours, it is also practical -- by asking one's body to move in natural and necessary ways that strengthen muscles and joints, gardeners maintain a higher level of fitness for their other everyday tasks. As a natural, body weight bearing exercise, the healthy activities associated with gardening can also help prevent osteoporosis and maintain a strong frame.
The health benefits of garden work go beyond the physical as well -- there is the mental stimulation of planning, selecting, laying out, and maintaining a home plot. Whether it is flowers, edibles, or plants of a different sort, planning a year's garden can be an absorbing challenge. Designing not only a practical, but aesthetically pleasing, arrangement in one's home garden is a source of creative satisfaction. Overall, no matter the kind of garden one chooses, the benefits to body, mind, and soul that home gardening can provide make it not just an excellent hobby, but a hobby for life.