5 Healthy Reasons to Add Garden Goals to Your New Year's Resolutions

Don’t get me wrong, I love gardening for the fresh food and flowers. Nothing beats vine-ripened and flavorful tomatoes; however, gardening has some wonderful and equally important health benefits.

Imagine digging your hands into cool soil as the sun warms your back. You pause to watch a butterfly drift between zinnias and milkweed. Sounds peaceful, doesn’t it? It's no wonder gardening is known to reduce stress and anxiety. Studies have shown that spending time in nature lowers cortisol levels, the stress hormone. This can result in reducing depression and anxiety.

You could call it horticulture therapy. While there are formalized ways to use gardening in therapeutic ways, you can also benefit from gardening in your own space. Create your own healing garden both with your interaction with nature and with the healthy things you grow. Gardening can be good for your heart as it helps you reduce stress and anxiety and helps you eat more healthily.

From my personal experience, even a few minutes spent weeding or watering my garden in the morning or after a long day works wonders. I feel more peaceful and in tune with the natural world.

Gardening is a full-body workout disguised as fun. From digging and hoeing weeds to lifting bags of mulch and pushing a wheelbarrow, there are plenty of ways to keep your body moving. Gardening is considered a form of low-impact exercise, and all these movements can help keep your body healthy.

Staying physically active is important for many reasons. Daily physical activity can improve your sleep. Increased physical activity can also increase your energy levels. So even if you feel tired from sitting in the office all day, moving around and working in the garden can reenergize you and help you sleep better at night.

I love planting seeds and watching them grow. Tending to the plants as they grow increases my self-confidence each year. Harvesting food gives me the biggest sense of accomplishment.

Sharing fresh produce and flowers means I’m helping to lift those around me. Donating food to others gives me a renewed awareness of being connected to others and being able to serve.

As I’ve mentored others and helped them to grow a garden, I’ve seen their self-confidence increase. Growing something from seed that results in food you can eat is definitely a self-esteem booster.

As you learn to grow more things, you’ll see what’s possible in your garden as well as other areas in your life.

With all these healthy benefits of gardening, how do you get started? If you’re already a gardener, you could add some new varieties to increase your sense of accomplishment this year.

If you want to increase your social engagement, try growing something unique you can talk about with others or grow an extra row of something you love so you have enough to share.

Even if my garden doesn’t go exactly as planned (and really, when does nature ever follow our every expectation?) I’ve never regretted having a garden.

The physical exercise, the outdoor enjoyment, the creativity, and the sense of accomplishment are the healthy benefits I get from my garden every year.

Growing a garden will be a natural fit if you’re setting goals for a healthier life. And, if you’re like most of us, New Year’s Resolutions often get lost somewhere between January and July. But that’s what makes gardening such a fun way to help you keep your resolutions. Your garden will still be there in July. And if you’ve put in some Zinnias and lettuce, you’ll already be enjoying the benefits of your gardening goals.

Remember, don’t make it too hard. Gardening is a delight when done right. Yes, it takes effort, but the effort pays huge dividends.

Set some garden goals this year and improve your physical and mental health.