EIGHT REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD HAVE A GARDEN

Gardening is a hobby of mine that I do not believe I can ever stop. My most prominent intuition whenever I see an empty yard is; “Let’s slap some garden over this”. Throughout my adult life, I have kept a garden beside every house I lived in, and tending to these tiny farms has been a calming indulgence, you can say, therapeutic.

I have this slapping melancholy feeling whenever I see an empty yard that its owner does not intend to turn into a garden. Sometimes I wish I could grab a gardening bible and go on a green-evangelism. I can imagine the look on people’s faces when I start with the line “Hello. Do you have a moment to talk about our green and calming neighbor, garden?”. But no, I am terrible at telling jokes, I should probably stick with writing these blog articles as evangelism. 

Let me get to it then and give a few reasons why you should consider having a garden:

• Healthy Vegetables: With growing concerns around the globe that chemicals and preservatives used to keep fruits and vegetables fresh by food companies are potentially harmful. Many people are developing a growing distrust for buying their vegetables from the superstores. I am not saying you should have a suspicion for these stores, I am not saying that the preservatives are harmful to your health – what I am saying is, it will feel great for a change to have absolute confidence about the source of your vegetable. There is no other source that can give such certainty more than a garden that you have personally grown.

• Therapeutic practice: After-hours running around the city getting one or two errands out of your checklist. We are all too familiar with the bustling, fast-paced day to day of the modern world. The car honks, the traffic jams, counter ring as we pay for our meals from the restaurant; there is no doubt that we live an exciting life, but sometimes, if not most times, it takes a toll on our physical and mental conditions. Having a garden you can work and care for with your hands can be largely therapeutic because there is a great deal of peace, serenity and connection to the little things that matter that comes with such humble indulgence.

• Improved health: Gardening comes with its own exercises that can be refreshing; tilling the soil, planting, weeding, watering and harvesting gets you outdoors, breathing fresh air and burning a few calories while you’re at it. It’s also a great way to relax and get the stress out of your mind. While you’re working up a sweat, you also know fresh-grown food is packed with nutrients, high in fibre and low in calories.

• Save a few bucks: The grocery store is one place we hardly can live without making a few stops every two weeks. Food is one essential expense that we can never mark off our ledger – but food doesn’t have to cost too much.

With a garden, you can grow a few crunchy fresh and healthy vegetables with your leisure time. I may not be a professor in accounting, but I am willing to bet that is sure to mark off a few bucks for your next grocery run.

• Another life skill to teach your children: Imagine the bonding time it will be with your children around having everyone dip their hands into the ground to weed out a garden, plant another tomato, till out that patch of land. Apart from the quality family time this promises, it is an excellent opportunity to impact invaluable life lessons on your children- inculcate in them an appreciation for the food growing process. These family bonding and teaching times, I guarantee, will stick with them for the rest of their lives. 

• Help the environment: The food-producing process is one that is quite energy consuming and can contribute to environmental lapses. Most countries channel nearly 12% of the total energy produced to the farm industry. When we factor in the carbon footprint of the food transportation process including the journey from our home to the store and back, it makes more sense why everyone getting a garden will contribute to reducing the environmental implications of our food production process. 

• The aesthetics of your house matter: Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but I dare say that when we see an ugly yard, we all agree. Your yard can either make or mar your home. When considering the aesthetics of your home, pay as much attention to your yard as it is a significant contributor to the general aesthetic feel of your property. One easy way to get this sorted is to have a garden. That burst of green, tinges of red and yellow flowering vegetables and plants can help your yard with its apparent looks. 

Do you need me to write more to convince you? I believe you should already be out making arrangements for your own garden by the time you get to the sixth point, so I am hoping you won’t have time to read to this paragraph when you should be getting your garden set up.