There are several types of hobbies; some for those who enjoy being indoors and some for those who love to be outside. Maybe you thrive on competition or enjoy the comfort of observing, regardless of how a person likes to spend their free time - no doubt there is something for everyone. However, gardening offers the most rewards and benefits to yourself as well as others. Regardless of age, gardening is an excellent way to reduce stress, boost your mood, increase exercise and improve the environment.
The garden should be a place where we can slow down, breathe deeply, feel the sun on our skin and reconnect with the earth. One form of stress is attention fatigue which can be caused by constantly directing our attention to cell phones, emails, and other electronic gadgets. Some experts have argued that
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Gardening is also being linked to a more positive outlook which is perhaps a combination of connection to the earth and a since of pride form something you’ve created. According to cnn.com, a recent study in the Netherlands, suggests gardening may be at the top of the list when it comes to leisure activity as people who gardened reported being in a better mood and had lower levels of cortisol than people who read. The trick is gardening engages you in involuntary attention which is more effortless. "We live in a society where we're just maxing ourselves out all the time in terms of paying attention," says Andrea Faber Taylor, Ph.D., a horticulture instructor and researcher in the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. You can also ward off the blues by planting a “mood garden” in your backyard filled with stress-relieving or energizing plants for eating and aromatherapy. For example; Swiss chard, blue potato, cherry tomatoes, black-eyed peas, oregano, and chamomile, sunflowers, evening primrose, lavender, and St. Johns
First of all, gardening has been proven to ameliorate the wellbeing of an individual. As Finley says, “we are soil”. Since we are creatures of the earth, it makes sense
Gradually, a garden can be a comfort place for a person. It can even bring a community together. Maybe it can also symbolize the meaning to a belief. A garden can benefit the gardener who is growing it or a community that is building one for a good cause. In “Sowing Change” by Donna Freedman, gardens means a lot to the community of North Lawndale, in Chicago. In “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier, a garden full of a few Marigolds means the world to someone.
...ere has been a rise in the interest of gardening (Wikipedia.org). Home gardens provide people with the freshest and best tasting fruits and vegetables. It encourages healthy eating habits, especially in children, by teaching them how to grow their own food. The produce is better for you by cutting out all of the harsh chemicals used on commercial farms. Also, it’s better for them environment by cutting down on fossil fuel use and carbon emissions. All people should celebrate the return of the victory garden.
One of these benefits is being able to relieve stress. Some evidence Williams provides to support this is when she writes, “Those living on blocks with more trees showed a boost in heart and metabolic health equivalent to what one would experience from a $20,000 gain in income. Lower mortality and fewer stress hormones circulating in the blood have also been connected to living close to green space” (57). When Williams states this in her article, she demonstrates the positive effects that nature has on the mind just by being around it! An effect so great that it’s equivalent to a “20,000 gain in income”, which a majority of people would be ecstatic about. Whenever I volunteer at The Grotto, I always find it enjoyable compared to volunteering at my high school due to the fact that the Grotto is surrounded by a great deal of wildlife, while on the other hand, volunteering at Centennial High seems to be bland because of it’s stuffy, enclosed, environment. Not only does nature relieve stress on the mind, but it also calms it too. For instance, when Williams writes, “Officers there report calmer behavior in solitary confinement prisoners who exercise for 40 minutes several days a week in a “blue room” where nature videos are playing, compared with those who exercise in a gym without videos” (58). This illustrates how simply seeing nature can affect the human mind, keeping some of the most aggressive, vicious, people calm. Whenever I get angry or frustrated, whether it be a game or homework, I like to go to the Lynch Wood park and lay there, listening to music. This tends to calm me down and revive my focus so that I can work harder. With nature being able to revitalize the mind, it can also aid the body physically too. “In 2009” begins Williams, “a team of Dutch researchers found a lower incidence of 15 diseases—including depression, anxiety, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and
I later understood that gardening is generally associated with a life of leisure, with relaxation. For me, it was a competition. I'd ask my seedlings, 'Who's growing the fastest?' 'Who's the tallest?' Fearing bad karma, I tried to stay impartial, lest a subconscious preference for green beans would cause me to water them more often, while dumping bleach on the onions. Every night I'd give my parents an update on rates of growth, any signs of produce, and my never-realized irrigation plans.
Gardening or horticulture is the activity tending and cultivating a garden especially as a pastime. In the other words, gardening is the job or activity of working in a garden, growing and taking care of plants, and keeping it attractive. Retrieved from dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/English/gardening. Horticultural therapy is a relatively new discipline combining horticulture and rehabilitation disciplines. It employs plants and gardening activities in therapeutic and rehabilitation activities to improve human wellbeing. Gardening is a very good therapeutic activity for someone who have disabled and mentally ill especially depression because it can be effective for healing, restoring and improving health and wellbeing in the recovery of depressive symptoms (Letitcia Y. Alston, 2010). This can be
As a child I remember my mother was always busy at work in her garden. It was full of lush red cherry and big boy tomatoes so, juicy and sweet that I could pick them right off the bush and eat it. I would eat so many of these lovely succulent round balls of red that my mouth would start to feel the pain from the acid in the tomatoes. She grew everything from a variety of vegetables so tasty to flowers so beautiful they would take my breath away. I could not wait for springs arrival, just to help her cultivate our summer gardens.
Outdoor work has always been important to me, both on the farm and off it. As someone who enjoys working with my hands to accomplish something that is challenging and productive, horticulture was a natural field for me to look into as a career. Horticulture requires both physical strength and mental ability that is practical and based on solving a real-life problem, rather than simply being an intellectual exercise or on arbitrary conditions. Horticulture as a term is a rather broad definition of a variety of careers and activities; is it merely backyard gardening or is it biological research culminating in genetically modifying plants for the advancement of our economy and well-being? The answer is honestly both, and in this aspect, horticulture is a rare field of study offering both simple (on the face of it, at least) manual labor and incredibly advanced research and study careers. Horticulture is also rare in that it has ties to both age-old practices and traditions of gardening and plant production and new-age philosophies of environmentalism, research, and science. People have been cultivating plants for decoration and sustenance for millennia, and horticulture is the best term to describe these activities. However, horticulture is also the best description of the work done by scientists, researchers, and educators to advance our knowledge of both how plants grow and develop and how the world can utilize these properties. With that being said, to learn more about careers in horticulture the following research paper will describe the definition of horticulture, the education and qualifications necessary, and the specific careers available in horticulture.
I have not had many meaningful moments with nature, even though I have many encounters with it. But the encounter that is the most prevalent in my mind is my vacation at Willow Lake, Minnesota. Here I had encounters with nature on the water, out bike riding, and watching a storm come in the distance.
Exercising outdoors will increase one’s adherence to physical activity. People’s fascination and attention increases when outdoors, which will raise their motivation to exercise. Statistics prove that people today in North America are going outside and exercising less, so the extra motivation is needed. Promoting exercise is one of the best ways to combat obesity, and outdoor exercise should be a priority. One can also find mental health benefits from exercising outdoors; such as higher feelings of restorativeness, which reduces stress. If runners choose to run outdoors, they will have greater geographical awareness. Exercising outdoors has greater benefits than being trapped indoors to
To understand why is agriculture important in the world of today, then first of all we must know what agriculture is? Agriculture is the basic material production of society, the use of land for agriculture and livestock, mining plants and animals as raw materials and labor to produce mainly food and some raw materials for industry. Agriculture is a major industry, covering many disciplines: planting, breeding and processing of agricultural products; in the broadest sense, also including forestry and fisheries. Agriculture is an important economic sector in the economy of many countries, especially in the past century , when the industry has not yet developed. Since the dawn of history, agriculture has been one of the importance means of producing
Livestock Production: Organic Cattle and Swine. The History of Organic Farming Organic agriculture is the oldest form of agriculture on our planet. Until post World War II, farming without harmful petroleum based sources was the only way of farming. There are no hazardous fertilizers and pesticides made from petroleum-based products.
Humans depend on plants in numerous ways. One reason we depend on plants is for consumption. Plants have the unique ability of producing their own food through a process called photosynthesis. In this process, plants are able to produce macromolecules such as carbohydrates that cannot be produced in animals or humans. In humans, the only to gain these macromolecules is to consume plant matter, or consume plant-eating animals (herbivores).
Leisure time, each person thinks of something different when they hear this. While reading an essay by Gregory A. Miller about "The Many Benefits of Hiking” I got to thinking what my favorite features and benefits of hiking are. My favorite thing to do in my leisure time is hiking because it calms my mind, it 's great for the body, and I enjoy doing all I can for our earth along the way.
“ Know your farmer, know your food” goes the slogan by organic farmers to promote the consumption of locally grown food through organic farming. Subsequent to the clear distinction between organic and conventional food, there is an increase in focus towards organic farming. The “silent spring” that represents the seemingly solitary voice of the science writer Rachel Carson, 1962 ushered in the organic farming movement to counter the green revolution industrial-scale use of pesticides and fertilizers back in the 1960s. However the use of the term “organic farming” started with Lord Northbourne (aka Walter James, 4th Baron Northbourne) (Pogash, 2008), which he derived from the concept of “the farm as organism” as, explained in his book titled