Benefits of having a garden at home: home, society and environment

Having plants at home is always nice, but in the case of gardens we are growing food, so the benefits of growing a garden at home (be it in the garden or a small garden on the terrace or patio) are many more. … If growing any plant at home is beautiful and rewarding, it is especially beneficial to have a garden at home.

Gardens provide numerous environmental, social and economic benefits.

Today we are going to see some of the main advantages of making an urban garden, some more obvious and others that perhaps we had never considered.

A Chinese proverb already said…

If you want to be happy one day get drunk,

If you want to be happy for a week, get married

If you want to be happy for a year, have a child

If you want to be happy all your life, grow a garden.

Advantages of having a garden at home

They will make your home a more beautiful and pleasant space.
It can be grown in little space. There are many types of gardens and you don’t need a large space to grow. With small gardens you can also take advantage of all the advantages of growing a garden at home. Many garden crops can be grown in small spaces such as cultivation tables, vertical gardens, a flowerpot with plants in pots and planters…
We can have aromatic herbs, vegetables and fresh vegetables with much more flavor. In addition, if you cultivate an organic garden (with techniques such as integrated control and without insecticides and synthetic chemical fertilizers) you will have organic foods that are beneficial for your health: more natural and healthier, free of artificial substances.
Save of time and money. This is one of the most obvious advantages of having a garden at home: if you have lettuce, rosemary, onions, basil, radishes, cherry tomatoes in your own backyard… you won’t have to waste time going to buy them and, furthermore, what you will save in the shopping basket (vegetables like basil, for example, are quite expensive).
Leisure and health: the orchards are a relaxing, healthy and very rewarding leisure alternative. Growing in an urban garden is a form of healthy entertainment at home. One of the advantages of having a garden is that it helps us to relax at home and fight against the stress that we live in the cities. In addition, the moderate exercise that is done in the garden is good for maintaining activity and agility in older people (more on this in » Therapeutic gardens: a garden in a health center «).
Gardening is very beneficial for children.Children who have a garden at home have a place of hands-on learning where they reinforce the science concepts that they are taught at school. The activity in the garden also encourages their creativity and the ability to deal with problem solving. In addition, they are a form of entertainment since sometimes they spend too much time in front of a screen and that is not good either…

We still have to see other benefits of having a family garden, but if all these have seemed enough to you and you want to encourage yourself to cultivate, you can start with a small urban flowerpot.

In the post on How to start a home garden we saw what the first steps are to set up a garden at home, and in the series «How to make a planter garden» on Agrohuerto TV, Álvaro gave us the keys to learn how to cultivate a small garden in pots (here we leave Chapter 1):

Other benefits of urban gardens

In addition to the advantages for the family of having a home garden, urban gardens have more general benefits that are related to social well -being and environmental sustainability.

Social benefits of urban gardens

1. People who have a garden at home are usually interested in its benefits and organic farming. Therefore, they learn about healthy lifestyle habits and can help in the environmental and nutritional education of the people with whom they interact.

2. The health of the planet and of people in the future depends on the children of the present, their education and environmental and nutritional awareness… With an organic garden, children learn all these concepts from a very young age.

3. Hobbies of this type bring people together and favor social interaction and the exchange of knowledge between generations.

environmental benefits

1. Recycling. Recycling is one of the keys to organic farming and favors the sustainability of resources and care for the environment. In a garden, rainwater, crop and kitchen waste can be recycled to make compost, and materials of all kinds can be recycled for various items in the garden (see “ How to use recycled materials in the garden ”).

2. Plants are Co2 capturers and temperature regulators. With your grain of sand you can help mitigate climate change and the heat island effect of cities. If we all collaborated on this (individuals, neighborhood associations, public administrations and city councils…) cities would be better places to live… And it is not a utopia, at the Green Cities in the World conference, scientific experts and researchers from several countries explained how they have verified these benefits with real experiences.

More information about the advantages of making a garden at home in the article Benefits of urban gardens: Complete Guide.

These are just some benefits of having a garden, if you can think of more or have questions about how to start growing a garden, you can participate in the comments below. I hope you liked this post and that, little by little, more urbanites are encouraged to cultivate family gardens .