A garden of any size and shape will benefit the gardener in many diverse ways. Growing a vegetable and herb garden gives you the basic benefits everyone knows about: delicious fresh food! A beautiful flower garden gives many people hope and joy. Spending time outdoors enhances your connection to nature and helps you to stay fit, healthy and strong. This health and fitness allows you to save money on doctor’s bills and gym memberships, helping your financial situation and making you feel more empowered.
A garden is also a wonderful thing for the environment, especially if you grow organically, investigate permaculture ideas, or plant a habitat garden for your local wildlife.
My garden is the key to my holistic health and well-being. It is the centre of many interconnecting needs and joys.
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Growing a garden does take time, energy and a bit of hard work. However, the benefits to your overall health and fitness are enormous. Instead of spending money on a gym membership, try growing a garden instead! Everything you do to grow a garden is exercise of one kind or another. I have found that my garden activities take me through a whole body workout. Gardening is very physical, involving digging, squatting, shoveling compost, raking mulch, pruning fruit trees, moving rocks or logs to landscape, planting trees and seedlings. All of these activities keep your body fit, while giving you the benefit of fresh air while you exercise and you get to know that you will eat well in future because of today’s sweat!
Growing a garden, especially if it is organic, allows you to know that you are giving your body the very best foods possible. Fresh foods straight from the garden are definitely better for you. In your garden you can control what goes in and keep away the petrochemicals, toxins and fertilisers that are not healthy for you and your family.
Other health benefits include using fresh herbs instead of overusing chemical medicines. Boost your immune system with fresh turmeric from the garden or echinacea and elderberry.
Growing a garden takes time and effort, and is not a quick and easy way of making money. However, over the long term, your garden will help you to save money at the shops, while providing various opportunities to earn a little pocket money. The more work you put into your garden, the more it will find it helps you financially.
It can be hard to recognise the full range of savings made when you grow yourself a diverse garden. Firstly because you have to outlay money and time initially without any reward. Secondly, the benefits of your garden increase incrementally over time, and can be hard to recognise on a daily basis.
If you plant a good vegetable garden, within 6 months you will notice the savings at the vegetable shop. Many staples like lentils and soy beans can be grown in the home garden and stored for the year. Herb gardens can save you even more cash, as you begin to replace many bought products for plants from your garden. You can save money on cosmetics, skin care products, hair care products, medicines and natural remedies. You can replace your herbal teas from the supermarket with fresh herbs you pick daily from the garden. In some areas you can grow yourself green tea and in other gardens coffee beans thrive. A lot of this depends on your local climate and the land you have available to garden. But most climatic zones are able to grow a wide range of fruits, nuts, vegetables, flowers, herbs and local indigenous plants.
Once you have an established garden , you will also find that you have the ability to make a bit of money at the same time as you are saving money. There are many different ways of turning your garden into a viable economic benefit, all depending on your time, interest and the type of garden you have. You could plant seedling punnets to take to market, using your own seeds you have collected from your garden. Seeds are often sought after by other gardeners, but remember to learn about correct seed collecting and storage. Other sources of income include productive fruit or nut trees, annual vegetables or herbs, home made foods like jams or chutneys, and arts and crafts items.
Growing an organic garden is good for the planet. We all need to take more responsibility for the foods we eat: knowing where they come from and if they are causing environmental destruction or unfair work conditions. Growing your own allows you to know you are not buying food that is unhealthy, environmentally destructive, or ethically unsound.
Gardens are places of life and diversity, which also helps the local environment. A simple backyard veggie patch can be such a spectacle of life, attracting bees, butterflies, lizards, lady bugs, ants, birds and worms. Other larger gardens can have trees for possums or birds, ponds for frogs, or native habitat areas. Even a small garden can have a few native plants, herbs or grasses that will attract wildlife and give them a chance at survival. Anyone with larger areas of land can plant trees to offset their carbon footprints and create small ecosystems of diversity to help the environment.
For me, spending time in nature is a spiritual experience that always gives me great joy. I find that my garden provides huge amounts of entertainment each and every day. At the moment, Australia is having some amazing rain and all my ponds and dams are filled with lush clear water. This water allows me a place to swim and relax on a hot December day.
This water also provides a home for many different species of frogs, water snails, bugs, dragonflies, beetles and many other creatures. I take great pleasure in watching frog eggs turn into little tadpoles and then grow legs and hop out of the pond. The number of different frog species on this property is astounding and I take great joy in watching for new or rare frog species. Having a garden and playing a role in nature allows you to enjoy the changes of seasons and take pleasure in whatever weather you have in the moment.
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