Benefits of Gardening: Why You Should Start a Garden This Year

This is my third year of gardening. At first, I wondered if it was worth the effort. But now, as I embark on my third year, I can confidently say that all the hard work is worth it and I am already starting my garden this year. There are so many benefits of gardening, and I would recommend anyone, anywhere to start gardening. This is your sign to start your garden in 2024!

Improved Physical Health

Gardening is a form of physical activity. Seed sowing may be a light activity, but digging for sure is hard work. In all blue zones, where people live longer than average, people garden even into their 90s and 100s. Being outside also helps to get more vitamin D through the sun, which a lot of people in the northern hemisphere need more of.

I do aim to have moderate to heavy exercise sessions every day, but since a lot of my work is sedentary as I work on the computer, I always strive to incorporate more light exercise during the day. Working from home definitely helps with this. Sometimes in between meetings, I will take 10 minutes just to water some seeds, or take half an hour of my lunch break to do some gardening. Or garden for half an hour before or after work. It definitely helps me increase my movement throughout the day. Fresh air can’t hurt either!

Improved Mental Health

Gardening’s health benefits are so vast that it has been prescribed with documented benefits. Gardening is known to lessen depression and anxiety, which in turn leads to other physical health benefits such as shorter hospital stays, less need for analgesic, lower rate of dementia, lower blood pressure, and many more. It is not a secret that mental and physical health are highly interlinked. Personally, I definitely can testify that I feel so much better after a session of gardening, whether it’s 10 minutes or 30 minutes. There hasn’t been any gardening session that I regret so far yet!

Tastier Food

I don’t know if I savour more out of it because I put in so much effort or genuinely tastes better. I don’t think the reason really matters as long as I enjoy it. Many people do agree with me as well. Tomatoes and carrots do taste so much more intense homegrown. I love using home-grown food in my Rainbow Salad Recipe because they taste so much better! Herbs also taste much better, fresher and stronger, I think it is because they don’t lose their flavour in the packaging during transportation.

Bigger Variety of Food

Eating a variety of plants are important for gut health and for our health in general. Through gardening, I can grow plants that may not be as widely available in the supermarket that I go to, such as asian vegetables such as kailan, choy sum, kangkong. Different colours of vegetables and fruits also contains different nutrients, and there are many coloured vegetables variety that are much easier to find as seeds or plants compared to as vegetables being sold in the supermarket.

Golden raspberries vs the standard red ones!

Help the Planet

Transporting seeds are so much easier than transporting fresh greens and fruits. Seeds of 1 kilo of carrots can be posted through the letterbox, but 1 kilo of carrots itself are so much more difficult to transport. Growing your own food helps to reduce the environmental impact of shipping food in the right condition and temperature, and also reduces a lot of plastic container that are used to package food in the supermarket. There are a lot of regulations regarding shapes and colours of food which means that many perfectly edible vegetables and fruits are wasted, which hopefully wouldn’t be the case if you find a slightly wonky vegetables or fruits. Berries are SO easy to grow, and you can always freeze them and use them in your Frozen Berry Smoothie!

Convinced? This would be your year! Getting started can’t be easier – get some compost, pot, and seeds. You don’t need a big garden either – windowsill is a perfect place to grow many herbs! Happy gardening!

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