As a real estate broker, I can assure you that nice gardens and landscaped yards will increase property value. If everyone in your area or neighborhood has beautiful yards, you will want yours to be nice so that your yard does not hurt your property value. Many people enjoy gardening and yard work.
Have you ever taken the time to think about how gardening, landscaping and even tending to houseplants can be an enjoyable form of exercise? There are health benefits to gardening and landscaping.
When I first decided to write this article, as a way to justify the money that I wanted to invest in some plants this year, I simply thought about how landscaping and gardening could be a fun form of exercise. After all, it is an activity that forces you to get up from your computer or the couch and move around.
The more you move around, the best chances you have of being at a healthier weight and keeping those muscles working. You also burn more calories when you are moving around.
The more you enjoy the form of exercise that you are doing, the more inclined you are going to be to want exercise.
There is purpose to gardening and landscaping
Even better, with gardening, you are not exercising just to exercise. There is a purpose to gardening and landscaping. For example, you may be hoping to have something pretty to look at. You maybe be gardening so that you can grow your own food. If you have a good crop, you might even have enough vegetables or fruits to share with others. If you don’t take care of your garden, it will most likely suffer from the neglect. If you con’t mow your yard, that grass is going to keep growing.
Gardening, mowing and other forms of landscaping typically require ongoing care during the growing season. If you neglect to get out and “exercise” by taking care of the garden or yard, the plants might die, the vegetables might get too big to eat, or the yard can quickly become an eyesore. So, gardening and landscaping gives you a sense of purpose that allows you to get some exercise.
You can garden alone. You can share yard work with other family members or friends. If you don’t have a place for your own yard or garden, you can volunteer to help a community garden or a neighbor with their garden.
The Health Benefits of Landscaping Vary From Person to Person
The fitness benefits that a person obtains at a gym will vary depending on the type of workout that they choose. The same holds true with landscaping.
The physical benefits can be from extremely strenuous activities such as digging and moving piles of rocks around. Or they may come from the small careful controlled movements associated with picking a tomato from the vine or transplanting a seedling.
The biggest difference between working out at the gym and working out in the yard is that a landscaper is creating something that can be enjoyed while getting the chance to exercise at the same time. For those of us that love working outside in the yard or garden on our landscapes, the health benefits are an added bonus.
For those that don’t particularly like working out, maybe the idea of working out in the yard will make your physical activity seem a little less like exercise. Or, if you enjoy exercising, maybe thinking about the health benefits of landscaping will make the yard work seem a little less like work.
Gardening, landscaping and yard work are all forms physical activity.
Research has repeatedly shown the health benefits of staying physically active. Landscaping and yard work offer a variety of workouts. Your workout could be simple as walking around thinking about what needs to be done. Or it can be vigorous, hard manual labor.
For example, a landscaper or homeowner can get look for landscaping ideas and inspiration while out a walk in the neighborhood or in a park. At the other extreme, the workout may involve pushing a lawn mower or something as vigorous as moving landscaping rocks around.
For others, the careful hand and finger movements required to pick tomatoes or beans can be an excellent way of exercising the hands. (Until you start aging and getting stiff, it is all too easy to overlook how much we do with our hands.)
The Mayo Clinic has an online article posted about the health benefits of walking. They stressed that any physical activity is good for you. https://www.mayoclinic.org/hea… They said:
Physical activity, of any sort, will
1. Improve your mood
2. Improve your balance and coordination.
3. Strengthen your muscles and bones.
4. Prevent or manage various medical conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure.
Gardening, yard work and landscaping in general, might help you lose weight. After all, it is hard to eat or snack when you are planting flowers, taking care of the yard, refilling bird feeders, arranging lawn furniture or any of numerous other outdoor tasks.
Here is a great article on working out with yard work. http://www.sparkpeople.com/res…
Landscaping and yard work gets you outside into the fresh air.
Being outside in the fresh air among flowers, plants and trees stimulates our senses and relaxes us.
Yard work and landscaping can reduce stress.
The results of a landscaping project can also promote stress relief and provide a sense of pleasure. The results can give you something to be proud of. (I know I smile like a happy mom every time someone compliments me on one of my plants.)
Horticulture Therapy Gardens
As I researched the health benefits of gardening and landscaping, I discovered that there were more benefits than I realized. As result, I will be adding to this article as time permits so that I can do the topic justice. If you have any suggestions or places that you can point me to for additional references, please share them in the comments.
Reading about the health benefits of gardens reminded me of the Horticulture Therapy Gardens that were at Texas A&M University. There I was able to see firsthand how gardens could benefit seniors and a myriad number of other people. For now, I will just share the links. Hopefully, one day I can find some pictures and notes that I had taken during my visits to A&M’s Horticulture Therapy Gardens.
American Horticulture Therapy Association http://www.ahta.org/related-re…
Program Sees a Path to Healing http://www.startribune.com/pro…
Horticulture Therapy Gardens: http://www.houstonchronicle.co…
My goal in writing this article is that I hope that it will inspire at least one person to start a garden or take on a landscaping project this upcoming year.
As I researched the health benefits of gardening and landscaping, I discovered that there were more benefits than I realized. As result, I will be adding to this article as time permits so that I can do the topic justice. If you have any suggestions or places that you can point me to for additional references, please share them in the comments.
Thanks for reading,
Sondra
p.s. Have fun working in your garden or yard.
It’s great to learn that landscaping can promote stress relief within oneself. My wife and I are moving to a smaller house soon and she is stressed out that our children won’t like the new place. I’ll be sure to tell her that she can relieve some of that stress by having a nice-looking yard.
I liked how you mentioned that a landscaping project can provide stress relief and pleasure to your life. My wife and I are looking to enjoy life in retirement and we were wondering what we can do to relieve stress and add pleasure to our lives. I’ll be sure to tell her that we should consider starting a landscaping project to improve our life.
I loved how you mentioned that landscaping your yard can give you health benefits. My wife and I are wanting to make our yard look better and we were wondering how we can get motivated to work on it. I’ll be sure to tell her that we can burn some calories while landscaping the yard.