Most people who garden do not think of their efforts as gardening for health, but planting and maintaining a garden is, in fact, gardening for health. Whether you have a large garden, a small garden or a container garden, gardening for health is what you are doing.

What are the health benefits of your gardening efforts?  First, you are able to provide your family with fresh, wholesome, organic vegetables necessary for good health. Fresh produce from your own garden contains more nutrients than those purchased in the typical market that may have been picked weeks earlier. Also, you can be sure that the vegetables from your own garden are organic and not contaminated with chemicals and pesticides often used on mass produced vegetables. Raising your own vegetables is a true gardening for health endeavor.

In addition to the nutritional value of fresh, organic vegetables, gardening for health offers many other benefits. Gardening is also a great form of exercise, sometimes moderate and sometimes strenuous. Strenuous exercise can include tilling the garden, hoeing, lifting and carrying water or soil. Picking vegetables or pulling weeds offers a lighter exercise consisting of stretching, reaching and repetition of motion. Garden aids such as the kneeler pictured below from  Plow and Hearth! help make the work easier.  Gardening for health is a delightful way to get the daily exercise needed for good health.  And the exercise related to gardening is much more enjoyable than attending a gym or aerobic center. Gardening for health is not a total substitute for regular exercise, but is a wonderful and enjoyable addition to a routine exercise program.

Gardening for Health includes the extra nutritional value of fresh, organic vegetables, the health benefits of exercise required to maintain a garden and, most importantly, the healing aspects of fresh air gardening. A garden can restore a sense of the continuity of life; it is a stress reducing hobby and offers an empowering sense of control.

Gardening for health is not new. The Japanese had their Zen Garden, India had their meditation gardens. Evidence of gardens for health can be found during the Middle Ages in Europe. Many of these gardens were found at Medieval Monasteries that housed the infirm and the mentally ill. Gardens and landscaping became a means of providing comfort and therapy for patients. This emphasis was lost in the early 20th Century with the advance of technology and the need for efficiency. What was lost is now being rediscovered.

Gardening for health or therapeutic gardening is making a comeback.  Some medical centers in the US are now creating centers that incorporate landscape environments to neutralize the cold, impersonal atmosphere of most hospitals and care centers.  Medical professionals are beginning to see the value of gardening for health and these gardens and green centers are being designed as an integral part of new facilities for the long term or short term care of patients or clients with chronic illness or those with serious life-threatening illnesses. These gardens and landscapes have been found to be a healing environment for both patients and staff.

Gardening for health will continue to be an integral part of new planning and design of medical centers and long term care facilities for the mentally ill or terminal patients.