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Gardening is far more than just a simple hobby – it is an amazing tool for improving your physical and mental well-being. Regardless of the sources of stress and turmoil in your life, your garden can be a self-care sanctuary in many beneficial ways.

Top 10 Ways Gardening Improves Your Well-Being

Any garden has benefits, no matter how big or small it may be, what you grow, or how skilled you are at every gardening task. While not every garden will yield every possible benefit, each bit of growing space you have will contribute to your overall wellness.

• Better Nutrition If you grow edibles in your garden, you are providing better nutrition for yourself and your family by encouraging fresh, healthy meals. You are also able to control any chemicals applied to the produce, and a bountiful harvest may yield extra food to pickle, can, or preserve.
• Full-Body Exercise Tending to garden chores requires you to bend, lift, stretch, turn, twist, carry, and otherwise move your body through a full range of motion. This is excellent full-body exercise to help you stay fit and strong, and can even help with weight loss.
• Dexterity As you pull weeds, trim blooms, train vines, plant seeds, and do other garden tasks that require fine motor skills, you’re building your hand and wrist strength and improving dexterity. This can also help alleviate arthritis and other joint pain.
• Vitamin D Getting adequate vitamin D is essential to improve your body’s calcium absorption, promote bone growth, and support your immune system. The time you spend outdoors on garden tasks in the sunlight ensures your body is able to make plenty of vitamin D.
• Overall Physical Health As you work in your garden you get good exercise, grow nutritious food, and improve your body’s function. This overall physical health improvement can lower blood pressure and cholesterol, improve your heart health, and reduce the need for prescription medication.
• Sense of Accomplishment As you do all the hands-on tasks to turn your garden from seeds, bulbs, or seedlings into a thriving, productive space, you garner an amazing sense of accomplishment. This is especially critical for anyone whose work or daily life may not have many hands-on aspects.
• Emotional Balance Time spent in nature, including gardening in your own backyard, window boxes, or containers, is proven to improve mental health by reducing depression, relieving stress, providing a sense of calm, improving mood, and enhancing mindfulness.
• Mental Challenges Gardening tasks can provide mental stimulation and challenges through planning layouts, solving pest problems, tracking new plants, trying new vegetable recipes, and more that can help reduce the risk of dementia and other mental difficulties.
• Connecting With Others Your garden can offer you the opportunity to connect with family members, friends, neighbors, and the whole garden community if you share your produce, enlist occasional assistance, work at a farmer’s market, or join local gardening groups to share tips and advice.
• Disconnect to Reconnect In our increasingly digital world, we can feel disconnected even when we have access to social media, texts, or email. By disconnecting while in your garden, you can reconnect with yourself and everyone you share your garden with, no screens or devices required.

Making the Most of Your Garden

To get the most of every benefit your garden offers…

• Grow plants you love and will enjoy tending to make any unpleasant chores less distasteful and to be sure you’ll take advantage of the harvest your garden produces.
• Experiment occasionally with new plants or cultivars to enjoy the curiosity of discovery and you might find new favorites on your must-plant list.
• Learn about more than plants to help your garden thrive by studying the soil, garden tools, local climate, seasonal changes, beneficial wildlife, etc.
• Make gardening an ongoing habit by tending to it daily. This will make chores much more manageable, and the benefits your garden offers will become part of your daily life.

Your garden has a great deal to offer, and the more you take advantage of all its benefits, the more your overall well-being will improve.