A Guide To The Benefits Of Having A Flower Garden
Why do you want to have a flower garden? Is it for aesthetic purposes or simply utilizing the unused space on your property? Or maybe because you love flowers and want to have some around you?
In general, having a garden at home can impact a person’s life in various aspects—physically, mentally, and even financially. For instance, if you love to garden, it can encourage you to produce your own food like vegetables, which, in effect, can lessen your expenses on food.
There are various types of gardens depending on what you aim to plant, and a flower garden is an example. If you like flowers and you’re planning to create a flower garden, continue reading to know the benefits of having one:
1. Flower Garden Increases Visual Appeal
There’s no doubt that flowers are beautiful, and this is one of the most common reasons people consider having a flower garden in their yards. Growing different flowers in your garden adds color and beauty to your landscape. Additionally, you don’t have to spend money on flowers to give out on special occasions.
Besides sprucing private property, different flowers with different colors such as red, pink, blue, and white also beautify community spaces such as highways. Some communities go out of their way to plant wildflowers such as Wilde Rose flowers along community pathways and highways to encourage beautification.
2. Gardening Is A Mode Of Exercise
As mentioned above, gardening can impact your physical health. In fact, it’s considered a subtle way of exercising. This is because gardening uses various muscle groups without much efforts, like jumping or running. Almost every person can participate in gardening, regardless of age. That said, gardening is an excellent physical activity.
Planting and digging require energy which helps in calorie burning. When you bend and stretch your body, you also burn a good number of calories. Generally, gardening helps burn 57 to 135 calories every 15 minutes you stay active. However, the number of calories burnt varies depending on your weight, height, and gender.
3. Gardening Can Lower Your Blood Pressure
Since gardening is considered an exercise, it can also lower your chances of developing a stroke or heart attack. Grown-ups are recommended to have 30 minutes of moderate physical activity several times a week. Thus, gardening can be the easiest way to ensure your heart is pumping as it should. In fact, seniors who participate in gardening are less likely to experience heart attacks or strokes than those who don’t.
4. Gardening Is Good For Your Bones
When taking care of your flowers in the garden, your skin is exposed to the sun. Sun exposure helps your body manufacture vitamin D, an essential vitamin that helps strengthen your bones and immune system. Furthermore, sun exposure reduces the chances of developing cholesterol and breast cancer, among other health conditions.
When your vitamin D level is low, you’re more likely to develop metabolic syndrome, dementia, psoriasis, and type 2 diabetes. To prevent your vitamin D levels from dropping, ensure enough sunlight exposure.
5. Flowers Enhance Mood
Flowers are usually given during special occasions or for special reasons. This is because flowers can positively impact one’s mood and increase overall well-being. When a person sees colorful flowers, there is a feeling of joy and happiness.
In fact, connecting with nature or simply spending some time in the garden can lower anxiety levels, making a person feel less anxious or depressed. Thus, a person struggling with sadness, anxiety, or depression, is encouraged to engage with nature or tend a garden to help ease the negative emotions.
6. Gardening Is An Effective Tool To Recover From Addiction
Working with plants is sometimes used as a tool for addiction recovery. As mentioned earlier, flowers provoke feelings of positivity in individuals recovering from alcohol addiction; hence, such people can benefit from being around flower gardens.
In a particular study, individuals recovering from addiction were allowed to participate in natural recovery, where they chose gardening or art as a natural therapy. Those who decided on gardening reported positive results compared to those who chose art after some time.
7. Improves Memory
Besides ensuring that you’re physically fit, flower gardens also provide your brain is in the right state. According to a study, seniors aged 70 to 82 benefit from gardening since it enhances brain nerve growth.
After seniors were recommended to participate in any form of gardening, whether planting, watering, or raking for 20 minutes per day, brain nerve growth increased tremendously. Imagine being mentally stable due to spending time in a flower garden; what a beautiful choice.
8. Flowers Freshens Up The Air
Like other plants, flowers have various benefits for the environment. Flowers, too, get rid of pollutants from the air. During photosynthesis, flowers release oxygen while absorbing carbon dioxide. This process ensures the air is clean and fresh, fit for human use.
In addition, flowers hold soil particles in place, reducing the chances of flooding and erosion. This makes planting flowers an ideal and pretty choice.
9. Flowers Attracts Pollinators
Do you love the sound and presence of different insects and birds? If yes, you need to have a flower garden in your home. Flowers attract pollinators such as bees, moths, butterflies, and the like. When you have such insects in your compound, your house appears lively.
Flowers also attract different kinds of birds, providing you with different melodies. Imagine other birds, butterflies, and bees flying and making different sounds in your home; what a magnificent moment.
10. Flowers Are Natural Pest Controllers
Flowers control pests indirectly. When flowers produce nectar, they attract pollinators such as birds, hoverflies, and ladybugs. These pollinators then feed on pests in your garden, preventing them from multiplying and destroying your flowers. When pollinators control pests, the use of chemical pesticides in your garden is also eradicated or reduced.
Moreover, some flowers also act as insect traps. These flowers are attractive to insects that feed on them instead of your precious vegetables. For instance, flowers like marigolds attract nematodes, slugs, and snails, preventing them from reaching your tomatoes and other vegetables. On the other hand, nasturtiums attract aphids like whiteflies, black flies, and green flies, threatening ornamental plants and vegetables.
11. Some Flowers Control Weed Growth
Most gardening time is used to control weeds. Fortunately, you can save this time by planting flowers that grow densely at a short height. Due to their dense growth, such flowers completely shade the ground below. This results in weed control since no weed can grow between or under them due to lack of space and sunlight. With such flowers, you’ll enjoy a beautiful garden free of weeds.
12. Can Provide A Source Of Community
Developing a flower garden as a group project is a great way to encourage social interactions and intimate connections. Working together to beautify a community space is a natural way of being active and converse.
When you participate in developing a community flower garden, your social aspect is bound to improve. Group gardening is a better way of making beautiful memories and meeting new friends, hence developing beautiful relationships, just like flowers.
13. Encourages Creativity
Imagine this: selecting different types of flowers with different heights, then planting them in rows or a pattern. You can also try cross-breeding them to develop a totally different flower species. What about creating a word or a symbol using flowers; that’s creativeness. There’s so much you can do using flowers to showcase your creativity.
14. Helps One Understand Nature
From the moment you dig the ground to applying manure to planting flowers until they flourish, there’s a lot to learn. During this process, you understand that nothing can work on its own and the entire natural cycle.
For instance, you understand that plants require soil and water to grow. The soil requires organic minerals to enhance flowers’ growth. The flowers require pollutants to multiply, as pollutants require nectar to make food. As a gardener, you need flowers to get fresh air and beautify the surroundings, and, in return, flowers need you to survive. With all this knowledge, you learn nature’s course and living things need each other.
15. Makes You Want To Wake Up Every Morning
Gardens are like babies, especially flower gardens. You have to wake up every morning to attend to it, or else your plants will die. Given that you’ve sacrificed your time to dig and plant your flowers, you don’t want them to get ruined. Therefore, you’ll have a reason to wake up early in the morning to water and attend to your flowers to maintain their beauty.
Conclusion
You now know that flower gardens go beyond beautifying your space with the above information. You get to be creative and understand nature. If you’re always in a bad mood or stressed, create a flower garden and be guaranteed joy and happiness. Luckily, these benefits don’t depend on your garden’s size or the flowers you grow.
Whether your space is tiny or massive, or whether you grow roses or lavenders, nothing will stop you from reaping the benefits mentioned above, so long as you have a flower garden.
