If gardening supplies were calling your name during a recent shopping trip, it’s time to consider taking up the popular activity. Here, learn how gardening benefits your physical, emotional, and mental health. No matter what types of plants you grow, you’ll reap a variety of health perks.

How Does Gardening Promote Wellness?

1. Burns Calories

Weeding, pruning, and tilling are among the gardening activities that burn calories and help lower body mass index (BMI). An hour of light to moderate yard work burns up to 330 calories and helps you manage your weight, tone muscles, lubricate joints, and boost cardiovascular health.

2. Provides Vitamin D

Going to work with gardening supplies under bright sunlight gives your body the opportunity to produce vitamin D and subsequently increase calcium absorption. The body does not make the essential vitamin contributing to strong bones on its own.

Remember to wear a hat, protective clothing, sunglasses, and sunscreen after spending 10 to 15 minutes under the sun to reduce your skin cancer risk.

3. Relieves Stress

Physical activities such as gardening lower stress levels by producing endorphins, or feel-good brain chemicals. Enjoying the outdoors reduces anxiety and tense feelings further to help the body produce less cortisol, the stress hormone linked to belly fat.

4. Lowers Dementia Risk

Research indicates gardening helps lower the risk of dementia by 36%. Physical activities appear to increase brain volume in the hippocampus, or the section that controls memory, to help protect against cognitive decline.

5. Improves Nutrition

By consuming vegetables, fruits, and herbs grown from personal gardens, nutrition improves. Whole foods provide the foundation for balanced, healthy diets, unlike processed fare that’s loaded with sugar, sodium, saturated and trans fats, and chemical additives.

Produce and herbs contain a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, and compounds, such as vitamin C and zinc, which promote your health and improve immunity. 

Stock up on gardening supplies at Racine’s Feed, Garden, & Supply. Residents throughout Robertsdale, AL, rely on the gardening and outdoor center for livestock feed, horse tack, fertilizer, and hunting accessories in addition to gardening supplies. Call (251) 947-3003 today with product questions, or visit the feed store online for more information.