Spring is on the way, and if you haven’t thought about it yet, it’s time to think about the garden. For those who have a lawn full of grass and no garden at all, or for those who normally use their gardens to grow veggies, this year should be the year you start a flower garden. Here are 5 reasons why:
1. Growing Your Own Flowers Saves You Money
You don’t need me to tell you that flowers can be expensive. Having your own material on hand can really help your bottom line if you’re in the floral industry. A flower garden gives you the opportunity to grow large quantities of the most popular flowers you sell. It also gives you the opportunity to experiment and try out new varieties with less of a financial commitment.
You don’t have to be a florist to see a positive impact on your wallet, though. Amateur arrangers can meet their floral needs for the season with a well-planned garden. While it will take time to establish something like a very productive rose bush, you’ll see a return on an investment in annuals in a few short months.
2. Gardening is Good for Your Health
Gardening is great for both physical and mental health. Physically, gardening burns calories, builds muscles, increases flexibility and helps us maintain good balance and a strong core. These positive physical impacts create a virtuous cycle: physical activity improves our sleep patterns, which reduces fatigue and gives us more energy for more gardening.
As you might imagine, these physical benefits translate to mental benefits, as well. Active lifestyles in general reduce stress and anxiety while improving mood, cognitive function and symptoms of depression.
Research shows that gardening in particular has positive effects on mental health. Interacting with plants reduces stress, boosts serotonin levels and decreases pain and anxiety. All of which makes gardening good therapy.
As for therapeutic plant-related activities outside of the garden, you may also want to check out our detailed list of the Best Flower Colouring Books for Adults [Review]. After a long afternoon of gardening, you might want to sit down with a beautiful picture of a flower or a bouquet and colour it in with your pencils or crayons.
3. Your Garden Can Help the Environment
Gardens are not automatically great for the environment (particularly if they’re water or pesticide-intensive), but yours could be. There’s a devastating lack of biodiversity in the typical residential property. Growing native plants can go a long way to restoring it.
Native flowering plants will be a boon for local pollinators like butterflies and bees, who need all the help they can get. Native plants are also more likely to thrive with less water and fertilizer, and will help you start (or keep) an organic garden.
Even if you choose not to grow native plants, having locally sourced, organic flowers for your bouquets and arrangements cuts down your carbon footprint by reducing the energy associated with the transportation, packaging and cooling needs of your usual flowers.
4. If You Start a Flower Garden This Year, You Can Grow More Flowers Next Year
If you establish perennials this year, next year they will come back just that little bit bigger and stronger. The bulbs you plant this year will grow and multiply, meaning larger and more numerous flowers next year. And once you’ve properly prepared your garden, every layer of compost and organic material you add only enriches your soil, providing an even healthier growing environment for your plants.
By planting a flower garden, you create a little ecosystem where some plants can help others. Some flowers need the shade that taller plants provide. Others benefit from being paired with low-growing, dense groundcovers that keep down weeds. When you establish some varieties of flowers, you create more ideal growing conditions for other varieties you can introduce next year.
5. Flower Gardens Make Every Home More Lovable
It doesn’t matter how much you like or dislike your home, a flower garden will make you love it more. Flower gardens can balance and smooth out any architectural features you don’t love about your home and enhance the ones you do. They create focal points in landscaping and liven up bare spaces.
Well-planned gardens have something coming into bloom all season, which will make you more invested in your living space and more excited about what’s coming up next.
We should note that if you love your home, there’s an excellent chance that other people will, too. Curb appeal is a nice benefit of having a flower garden, but I’m mostly interested in you loving your home and being excited about being there.
By growing a flower garden, you can design the look and style that makes you happiest. If you like a wild aesthetic where plants tumble over each other, you can have that. Do you want perfectly manicured beds and lots of well-defined growing areas? Do that thing. Your garden can be as romantic or whimsical or colourful or minimalist or modern as you wish, and that can change your whole home’s aesthetic in remarkable ways.
If these five reasons why flower gardens are amazing haven’t convinced you, consider this. You’ll never see a list of reasons why you shouldn’t start a flower garden. There’s nothing to lose, and what you’ll gain will be worth every bit of effort you put into it.
Feature image: Alexas_Fotos; Image 1: Erik Karits
