Until a few years ago I would have never put stress free living in the same sentence as horticulture. After all isn’t that hard work. What I found in Horticulture, more commonly known as gardening, is a calm, introspective activity. A lot of people live in apartments or condominiums where there’s little or no place to garden. Then there are those who live in houses with well kept lawns maintianed by a landscaper because the homeowner has too much on her plate to garden.
Gardening requires time and you tell yourself you have too much to do and no time. Well, that’s the point – you need to get away from the stress of your day-to-day schedule and gardening is great way to do that! Whether you have a enormous backyard or a couple of containers on a patio, you’ll be able to enjoy the therapeutic benefits of gardening.
More and more psychologists and physicians are prescribing gardening for stress reduction therapy everyday. Gardening allows you to enjoy an activity that’s nurturing and gives back whatever you put into it.
In our instant gratification world, gardening changes the importance of time. Plants don’t grow overnight. During the growing time, plants require attention and depend upon you to protect them from bugs and disease.
Gardening teaches patience that over-stressed, extremely anxious people don’t appear to have. If you’re facing burnout and stress from work or your personal life, gardening is an activity that gets you outside and actually helps to lower your blood pressure.
Gardening can also give you a secure place to take out your frustrations. Angry with your co-worker? Spend your time focuing you your gardening and not your colleagues.. Need to work out some anger? Pull weeds.
And if you really would like to work out some emotions, work until your dead tired and sweating, cut off a few dead branches or mulch the flower beds. In this ways, you get something constructive out of negative emotions. Even if your thumb isn’t very green, you can arrange a Zen rock garden surrounded with easy to care for plants in small containers.
If you use small containers, you only stand to lose a few plants at a time. Then you replace the container and don’t have to dig in the dirt. That’s much easier and faster. Another way to make your garden a peaceful place is to add a water feature.
Local home improvement stores have kits with everything you need and classes on how to set up a fountain or pond. Even a small water feature on the patio can bring more of a sense of accomplishment and peace to your garden then you can even imagine.
As you gain more gardening experience, you will be able to grow different types of plants. Check with your local plant nursery for suggestions on what types of plants fit into the limits of your outdoor environment and within your skillset. Gardening might just become habit-forming it’s a effective way to decrease stress and provide tranquility.
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