Gardening Promotes Healthy Living

Happiness in the Dirt

With temperatures forecast to be in the mid 60s for the last 10 days of April, this is an ideal time to plant your flowers and maybe a container or two for the patio or porch. The soil is warming and slightly moist from recent rains and besides, the sun is going to feel good beating down on you during this health crisis and it will do us all some good to get some fresh air. Gardening is an excellent and one of the best family activities there is. As Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills and Nash wrote, “teach your children well”.

According to the World Health Organization, good health means more than just the absence of bad health symptoms. It means the presence of positive emotions, quality of life, sense of community and happiness. (WHO 1948). There’s also a scientific reason that gardening makes you happy. Studies suggest that inhaling M. vaccae, a healthy bacteria that lives in soil, can increase levels of serotonin and reduce anxiety. According to Discover Magazine, ‘you get a dose of M. vaccae just by taking a walk in the wild or rooting around in the garden’ and this ‘could help elicit a jolly state of mind.’

Call it the “gardening glow”—working with plants provides serious stress relief and positive sensory stimulation, suggests an experiment done by NASA in 2016. That’s right, the scientists responsible for hurtling humans into space have discovered that gardening can keep astronauts sane and happy in the severe environment of outer space. In their research, they found that planting and nurturing seeds, even just in small pots, provided lifted mood and eased stress.

So if you’ve been living life with a little voice in your head whispering, ‘Psst! You should start a garden,’ it’s for good reason. The health benefits of outdoor gardening range from increased nutrients in your diet to staving off chronic diseases. Our diverse selection of garden plants is shown below. Our selections can vary as new plants are added throughout the growing seasons and our expert gardening staff and personnel are familiar with our plants and can answer your questions and guide you in the right direction to obtaining your “green thumb”.