7 Reasons to Love Gardening

Do you like gardening?  What do you mean no?

I know, it’s wet, dark, cold and blustery right now. The trees are dropping their leaves, the worms are creating casts on your lawn and the perennials are looking rather untidy and motley. What better time to preach gardening to those that may be inclined to avoid it at costs or tip-toe about it in fine weather.

Here are my seven reasons to love gardening.

1. Gardening teaches you patience.  We don’t get many opportunities these days to practice patience but if there is one place in the whole world that you can’t avoid it, then it’s out there in the garden.  You can buy plants at all stages of growth, you can buy potions and fertilizers and any type of growing support you like but when and only when that plant is ready to grow or flower will it do so.  And no amount of pushing and prodding will make it happen any quicker.  And by not rushing the process will you discover that it was worth the wait.  In fact, you’ll be overjoyed in the end because of that wait.  Patience will turn you into the master of planting.
2. Gardening is a learning space.  Books, websites and TV programme are great for understanding all about different types of plants and how to grow them but ultimately the real learning takes place outside, in your own garden.  It’ll be a unique learning experience tailored to your local area, local weather, local soil and local temperatures.  And you’ll never stop learning.  Just when you think you’ve mastered the art of growing a plant or vegetable you’ll suddenly discover you missed something all along that will help you even more.
3. Gardening brings about positive mental wellbeing.  Working so close to nature and the earth can have a genuine effect on your feelings and emotions.  The simplicity and ease by which gardening allows you time to just enjoy working with your hands and cultivate plants is like nothing else.
4. Gardening activates all of your senses.  To smell lavender, touch lambs ears, to hear the wind rustling through the weeping willow, to taste a tomato off the vine and to see the splendour of flowers in spring.
5. Gardening is the best exercise you can get.  Pulling, pushing, lifting – and that’s just the bags of compost.  Walking around, mowing, hoeing, digging, weeding.  All work undertaken in the garden can keep you active in a way that allows your body to move naturally (be careful moving those bags of compost though!).
6. Gardening allows you the opportunity to grow exactly the things you want to see or eat.  If your favourite flower is a sunflower then grow a whole garden of them.  If you like eating potatoes or using fresh herbs then that’s what your garden can be full of.  You are neither bound nor restricted.  It’s a blank canvas, especially for you to cultivate just how you want it.
7. Gardening creates a place to sit and relax.  An area (or a whole garden) dedicated to just enjoying your hard work, your day at work or just a day off work.  A space away from social media, a place to recuperate and enjoy all the sights and sounds that come from gardening.

Does that make you want to get in the garden now?  I do hope so.

Thank you for reading.