Gardening Not Only Feels Good

Do you ever wonder why you garden or why it feels so good to garden?

There’s increasing amounts of research that proves that gardening is both physically and psychologically good for you. For example, I’m not a great fan of useless aerobic exercise for exercise’ sake and that is putting it mildly. Simply understand that gardeners burn as many calories in 45 minutes of gardening work as those determined exercisers do in 30 minutes of bouncing around. Forty five minutes of making your world a better place is the same exercise as bouncing in place for 30 minutes.

Not only that but one hour of moderate weeding burns 300 calories. Pushing a small lawn mower drops 500 calories an hour. Playing tennis burns about 500 calories an hour as well so if the significant other in your life wants a bit of fitness, hand them the lawn mower rather than the tennis racket. Get one of those modern manual lawn mowers and who needs a gym membership?

And guys do your bone-density challenged better-half a real favor. Research has shown that women who garden at least once a week have a higher bone density than women who jog, walk or do aerobics. Give your better half a high class manual lawn mower for her next birthday and tell her you’re thinking of her health! (and good luck with that)

Got a toxic work environment? Add some flowers or foliage plants to your work environment to reduce your stress. Psychologists tell us that workers with a view of natural elements such as trees or flowers experience less job stress, were more satisfied with their jobs and reported fewer ailments and headaches than those who couldn’t see any outside green scenes. No wonder the boss with the big corner office and view feels so good.

And adding live interior plants (you do have to water these) may increase worker productivity and reduce stress by as much as twelve percent. All those big green trees and foliage plants have a positive effect on our working life. Green indoor plants also remove low levels of chemicals such as carbon monoxide and formaldehyde from our office and home environments as modern glues and construction materials continually outgas these fumes.

And our city planning spaces can benefit from green plantings. In an analysis of the relationship between crime rates and vegetation in inner city public housing developments in Chicago, buildings with high levels of greenery had roughly half as many crimes as buildings with no greenery. Not only that but by creating small parks and green spaces in inner city areas, residents tended to use the mini-parks for meetings and relaxation. Personalizing the city was accomplished through the use of garden spaces. Spending public money on flowers makes sense in creating better living conditions for us all.

How about your own property?

If you are planning on selling this spring understand that homes with excellent landscaping ratings can expect sale prices of four to five percent higher than equivalent houses with only good landscaping ratings. Having excellent landscaping designed and installed can add as much as fourteen percent to the resale value of a building and speed up the sale by as much as six weeks. Increasing the curb appeal only makes sense when homes with poor landscaping can expect to sell approximately eight to ten percent below equivalent homes with good landscaping.

Bottom line – get your place professionally landscaped if you plan on selling. By spending five percent of the value of your home on the installation of a quality low-maintenance landscape, you could boost the resale value by 15%. This is easy money. As a simple note, a mature hedge raises the value of a property by 3.6 percent, a landscaped curb by 4.4 and a landscaped patio by 12.4 percent. If you don’t want to invest in landscaping, planting a hundred dollars of brightly colored annual flowers is the cheapest possible way to improve curb appeal.

I have written about the energy conservation of plants in the past but let me repeat that you can reduce your air conditioning costs by ten percent if you plant shading plants around your air conditioning unit. Not only that but properly sited trees can save an average household between one to two hundred dollars in heating and cooling costs annually. For example, a vine on the side of the house creates an air space between the house and environment – acting as a cooling barrier in the summer and wind protection barrier in the winter.

It’s all good folks – not only does it feel good, gardening does good.