If you’re a long-time gardener, you can probably add to the list of benefits I’m providing. However, if you’re new to planting outside, these incentives may offer some insight as to why you should expand your gardening efforts.

Why You Should Grow a Garden

• Gardens are aesthetically appealing. Flower garden benefits most obviously add beauty to your landscape. As you know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so everyone’s feelings are different. Growing a flower garden allows you to practice self-expression. Hopefully, your expression translates to curb appeal in the landscape. Such activity creates a mood boosting benefit and helps reduce stress. Gardening is also proven to help reduce blood pressure.

• Gardens are good for you. Where do we begin with a phrase like this? Gardens help us in countless ways, depending on how we think of them. Want to learn something new? Visit a garden. Working in the garden is healthy for us physically. Hoeing, raking, bending and kneeling provides some of that aerobic exercise we don’t always get from our workouts. Studies have even shown that gardening can reduce your risk of developing dementia by 36%, meaning it’s great for cognitive and mental health too.

• Gardens have many styles. Gardens come in many shapes and sizes, as do the plants that grow in them. Include different styles of gardens in your yard. Flowers and plants with unusual or attractive foliage and exotic blooms add that extra wow factor. And there’s no shortage of gardening styles to choose from either. You can grow a garden based on a particular region, like a Mediterranean style or one having a specific use, like a cutting garden. Whatever type of garden you want to create is up to you.

• Gardens can be grown anywhere. The most popular and commonly grown gardens are those we use for food. With today’s various enclosures and bedding options, several gardens in our yard is not unusual. Some of us grow vegetables in containers with good results, especially when space is minimal. Perhaps, there is a raised bed or other area that only gets appropriate sun before the trees leaf out in spring. This might be our salad growing patch or even the carrot and radish bed.

• Gardens provide healthier food options. An ongoing way of improving our physical health is consuming our harvest. This keeps us and our families healthier, especially if our garden grows organically. Avoiding those store-bought fruits and vegetables is always a positive step in the right direction. These can sometimes be laced with pesticides and chemicals used to get them to us in a presentable manner. We can also avoid the sprays used to slow natural ripening.

• Gardens can help with privacy and noise. This is not an absolute, but rows of shrubs and trees may be used for privacy. Rows of trees block noise from a busy street or slow otherwise unstoppable winds. We see results and the benefits of gardening when growing windbreaks or shrub borders at our home.

• Gardens promote community. Combat loneliness by meeting people when you volunteer with others in a public or community garden setting. Hanging out with like-minded people is a good reason to take up public gardening. Get involved and see the positive changes in your body and your life.