10 Reasons to Start a Garden That Have Nothing to Do with Food

I'm going to convince you to start a garden this year, and I'm not even going to talk about the food. So if you've been waiting to start a garden, if you've been thinking maybe next year, maybe the year after that, I'm going to do all I can in this video to convince you that this is your year to make your garden happen. And we're not even going to talk about a single thing that you can eat. So. My name is Nicole Burke. It was, like, 11 years ago that I started my very first garden. It was an absolute favorite failure, but we did harvest, like, three things from it, and that was just enough to keep me going. I fell in love with the garden. It literally changed my life. And since then, I've made it my mission to get you and everybody else gardening, too. So welcome to gardenary. Gardenary stands for gardening is ordinary. Because that's what we want to make happen again, that all of us have a little garden we step out to and grab some food from every single day. And. And why would you want to do that besides having delicious food? Well, here are 10 reasons why. First up, we're going to talk about the physical benefits. Now, I outline these in my book, Kitchen Garden Revival. You can get this anywhere books are sold. I'll read you a little piece of this in just a bit toward the end of the video. All right, so let's talk about the physical benefits. Number one, you're going to go outside more. And we all know that we need to go outside more, but it's just really, really hard to. To make ourselves go outside more. Like, you're right now watching this video, and you're most likely not outside, right? You're most likely sitting inside. Your work is inside, your family's inside, your cooking is inside. So much of the things that we do now are inside. And yet science shows us that time outside makes us feel better, way, way better than we feel when we're inside. I noticed this even when my kids were babies. They would be crying, crying, crying, when all day long inside. And the minute I got them outside, they'd stop, their eyes would light up, and they're just, like, looking at everything in the sky, looking at the leaves, looking at the trees, looking at the plants. And it was this aha moment for me. Like, this isn't just for babies. Like, all human beings were just meant to be outside more. Like, if it works to make my baby happier and they can't even talk yet, then it's definitely going to work for Me as an adult. So that's reason number one, you're going to have more time outside if you have a garden, and more time outside is simply going to make you happier. Number two, physical benefit to having a garden is you're going to move your body more. The big talk right now about exercise is neat exercise. It's just like everyday activity tracking, like just knowing how much your body is moving in the everyday. I read this study the other day that it's just like, so bad for you to just sit down all day long. We need to be getting up every single hour. We need to. We need to be walking around. We need to be moving around, and that happens so easily in a garden. Raise your hand if it's hard for you to get up. The motivation to get in the car, drive down the street and go to the gym and actually walk in the door and do anything in there. Yes. But it is not that hard to get the motivation to walk right outside your back door and walk into the garden. And once you walk into a garden, no matter how big or small it is, you want to walk all around it. You want to do some tasks, you want to move this, you want to plant that, you want to pull this. And before you know it, you have gotten 2,000, 3,000, 5,000, 10,000 steps in just inside your garden. Studies show that when you're gardening, you don't even realizing, you're not even realizing that you're exercising. So you do it for so much longer than you do when you're, quote, unquote, exercising. So people on the treadmill, people at the gym, they're watching their watch, right? Like, how much longer do I have to endure this dread mill? Right? But in the garden, you're just having a good time. You're not even noticing that you're exercising. They say an hour of time in the garden equals about 350 calories of exercise. All right, so number two, you're going to exercise, but you're not going to feel like you're exercising. And we all need to do more of that. The third physical benefit to gardening is creating a beautiful, fun and motivational hobby for yourself. Guys, we are working way too much. Much. We're too stressed. We're too into our computers and our phones. We need things that we can do with our hands. Scientists, health professionals have been studying that. We have lost so much by getting away from the craft and the hobby that we used to be involved in decades ago. So gardening is a hobby. Gardening is something you get to do with Your hands. It's a way to watch the magic of what your hands can create right outside your back door. So if you've been thinking, like, I want to do a hobby, I need to do something besides just scrolling on my phone or being at work. Gardening is the most fantastic, the most practical, and the most useful hobby you can start because you're going to eat everything that you make. I mean, could it be more practical? I don't think so. So those are the three physical benefits to gardening. You're going to get outside, you're going to move your body, exercising, not even knowing it, and you're going to have created wonderful hobby for yourself. Now let's talk about the mental benefits for yourself that's going to happen when you start a garden. First up, the garden is meditative. So studies have likened time in the garden to time meditating. And I don't know if you've ever tried to meditate, but it's hard to do, at least for me. As soon as I try to close my eyes and clear my mind, I think of a thousand things that I need to be doing. But when I'm outside in the garden and tending my plants, it's just enough of a distraction that my mind calms down, my thoughts slow down, and suddenly I get to move into a meditative state where I'm less frantic, less stressed, less full of all these distractions, and just able to settle in and be right here. So if you know that you've got to lower your stress and your anxiety, if you know that you've got to bring it down a little bit. But meditation feels so out of reach for you. Gardening is your new bff. The next mental benefit for you for gardening is hope. I just talked to a student from our Kitchen Garden Academy class named Donna, and she was recently diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She was going through her treatment and she joined our Kitchen Garden Academy, set up her kitchen garden while she was enduring ovarian cancer treatment. In fact, her husband put her beds together and she said, she wrote to me, she wrote an email to say that the kitchen garden is the thing that kept her going through her cancer treatment. She said to put seeds and plants in the dirt gave her hope that she was going to live to see them thrive and grow under her care. And it doesn't just work for people enduring serious pain and challenge like Donna has with her cancer treatment. It works for you and me, too. Sometimes when we're just in like a blah stage of life or just this met or just this I don't have something to look forward to. The garden is one of those such simple and pure ways to have something to look forward to. You don't have to spend thousands of dollars on a vacation or, you know, leave your reality. You can just simply put a seed in the soil and wake up every single day for the next 5, 5, 10, 45 days wondering what happened to that seed that you planted. The garden gives you hope, and you don't even have to leave your house. The third mental benefit that you get from the garden is a reconnection with nature. I don't know about you, but growing up, I always had had ac, I always had heat. I was always just like adjusted to the perfect temperature. I had the same kinds of food from the grocery store every single week of the year. And so even though sometimes I knew it was fall, spring, or winter, I knew it more because of holidays rather than the real changes in nature. But when you have a garden, you're going to reconnect to nature and seasons like you never have before. I found that since I started a garden, my wherewithal, my cognizance of things that are happening in the sky, on the ground, in the air, are so much more awakened than they ever were before. I notice the bees, I see the butterflies, I hear the birds, I see the leaves changing, the leaves popping from the tree. All of a sudden, things that were kind of like just dead to me, black and white to me, are now in full living color because I'm experiencing them up close and personally in the garden. And the same thing will happen for you. The fourth reason, the mental benefit that you get from the garden is purpose. I was just listening to this talk all about the Japanese way of living and this idea of ikag, if I'm saying this right, I K A G A I. Basically, the idea is purpose. To wake up and to have a reason to get out of bed. Listen, we've all been there where you just lie there, the alarm goes off and you just don't want to wake up. And reality is, some days are just tough. Life can be hard. But having a garden, having something that's growing outside your back door, can give you purpose. It can give you a reason to get up because that plant needs you. You may think that, you know, your work has kind of come to a dead end. Maybe the people you care about, things aren't going great with them. But that plant, that plant is counting on you. She needs you to water her, to prune her, to trellis her, to make sure that she gets all that she needs to grow to her full potential. And sometimes, believe it or not, that's been the thing that's gotten me out of bed in the morning. And it can happen for you, too. So those are the mental benefits. We've got purpose, we've got hope, We've got a reconnection with nature, and we've even got the ability to meditate. I mean, have I convinced you yet? So far, we're down seven reasons. I've got two more reasons for you that are all about relationships. So the garden can be a place where you suddenly get to connect with people in a totally new way. It's this place where you get to come together with friends, with family, even with strangers. I found by having a garden. I have met some. So many people that never would have crossed my path otherwise. Just the other day, I met up with a friend on the street. Both of our daughters play soccer. We've known each other for a year. She just recently found out I had a garden, and we were just chatting on the street. But as soon as I was about to walk away, she said, you know, one day I want to come see your garden. And I said, well, come on down and y'. All. We had a moment in here. So the garden was a way for me to connect with her in a much deeper way. As a mom, I was looking for a place when my kids were young to get together with them, to hang out, to make memories where we were not competing with one another, where there was no winner and no loser and no best and no worst. And the garden really was that place for us as a family. It was a place where all of us could find something that we loved to do, that we wanted to do, and there wasn't, like a first prize or a last place. So the garden can be a place to connect with your friends and family in a totally new way, too, and a way for you to meet people you've perhaps never connected with before. Another way that the garden can benefit you relationally is it gives you the most fantastic place to host. So, you know, it's kind of overwhelming sometimes to welcome people into your home, to have them in your kitchen, to have them in your living room. But it's not nearly as intimidating to just welcome them over to come and hang out in your garden. I recently hosted a brunch here. We just hung out, we talked in the garden, we had a little bit of food, and the party was done. It was such an easy place to host in such a Fun way to connect with people. And so when you create a garden, you're literally creating like this third space where you're not inside, you're not outside. You get to connect in a new way, in a new place. And you've just built this, this new party place for yourself, your friends and your family. Now, before I tell you the very last reason to start a garden that has nothing to do with food, I'm going to read you from my book, Kitchen Garden Revival. Why Kitchen Garden? This is page 12 and 13. Mental health is quickly becoming the key indicator of overall well being. Depression, anxiety, stress and burnout are all serious in themselves. But those challenges are also linked to cancer, high blood pressure and heart disease. Heart. Our minds and our bodies are connected in ways that we're just starting to understand. And in this fast paced and demanding world, we've got to find ways to slow down, to reconnect with nature, and to care for ourselves again. Use a kitchen garden for yourself. The biggest reason to have a kitchen garden is for your own happiness. Stepping outside into the garden each day has proven to do just that. There's no more practical way to push yourself outside than than if the tastiest parts of dinner are growing inside your garden, you have to eat anyway. So why not pursue a mindful activity that not only feeds your mind and soul, but also fills your stomach for your community? Over the last few decades, there's been a growing interest in knowing our food's sources, returning to organic growing methods, and appreciating the nutrients available when eating freshly picked food. The kitchen garden is a key part of this movement. Although the garden won't provide the entirety of your family's fruit and vegetable needs, it gives you a taste of what's growing locally, an appreciation for the process of growing organic and natural food, and a connection to the growers or farmers in your area. Finally, no matter what, you should grow a garden for the whole world. We can all agree that things are not going well for the climate. And there's a lot that we could do to change it for for the better. Although it's not the only contributor, a few major aspects of our Earth's trouble are food miles, packaging and waste. Currently, most of the food consumed in America travels more than 1500 miles before reaching our plates. The petroleum demand on food is huge. So by growing food in your own personal kitchen garden and eating locally, you vastly reduce the number of food food miles your food needs to travel. And that brings me to the 10th and final but just the beginning of all the benefits you can get from growing your own garden, and that is the benefit that you have on the entire environment and the whole world. So I'll never forget when I was first setting up kitchen gardens for clients. I drove into my client's yard and I unpacked the plants, and I unpacked a milkweed plant. And almost immediately, a monarch butterfly came from behind the house, flew down, and landed right on that milkweed plant. And it was such a reminder that so much of nature is simply waiting on us to start a garden. That monarch, I don't know how she found me so quickly, but they are literally just waiting for us to walk outside and create a new space for them. Most of our places are just grass these days. Most of our outdoor spaces are not being used to welcome in wildlife, to take care of bees and butterflies. And when you create a garden, you create a new habitat for all those wonderful creatures. And you also reduce all of the fuel that's needed to get all the food you eat to your plate. It's not going to change everything. You're not going to completely replace all of your groceries with things from the garden. But even those few little things that you can change, every little bit of it adds up. And all together, we can make a huge difference if we all take those small steps one at a time. All right, there you have it. Those are the 10 reasons to start a garden. Even if you don't think you should, and even if you don't care a thing about growing your own food, you're going to feel better physically. You're going to think better mentally. You're going to relate better to all the people that you love and care about. And finally, you're going to be doing so, so much good for the whole planet and those tiny little butterflies, too. All right, so if I've convinced you that it's time for you to start your garden, then we've got all the resources you need to help you. We've got a live workshop coming up soon. You can find out how to sign up for it right below this video. And also a free resource to get you growing there, too. I also have my two books, Kitchen Garden Revival. This one shows you how to set up your kitchen garden. And this one shows you all about the plants to grow inside of it, leaves, roots, and fruit. You can find them both right below this video and wherever books are sold. Thank you so much for watching this video. Please subscribe. Tell me in the comments, which of these 10 reasons convinces you most that it's time for you to start a garden. And, of course, it would be such an honor if you would share this video with someone in your life that you're trying to convince that they should start a garden, too. Thanks for watching. I will see you next time.