Gardens encourage a healthy lifestyle. Gardens not only provide food fresher and more nutritious than what you can buy in the grocery store, they provide a steady and ample supply of low-calorie and mineral-rich fruits and vegetables, encouraging us to eat more and more healthy food. What's more, growing this nutrient-rich food requires the home gardener to get out in the sun and to play a little in the dirt. This activity provides more than a little exercise--it increases vitamin D and exposes the gardener to microbes and bacteria that can boost their immune system. A garden allows you to grow your vitamins and fiber in your yard while making your healthier in the process! Read more about what gardens do for your health.

Personal gardens make a healthy and productive ecosystem of what would normally be a grass-covered yard or concrete porch. This more beneficial use of land can generate healthier soil and sustain a variety of soil critters to thrive. A garden's plants--its flowers especially--attract pollinators that will not only benefit your plants but be fed by them! You will be supporting their wild colonies. Your garden will also attract a variety of insects, arachnids, fungi, and birds that will bring new beauty and song to your yard.

Gardens can transform the way food moves throughout our society. Gardens save you money--$3 will buy you two tomatoes, or it will buy you a tomato plant, which will grow up to 25 tomatoes--saving you money to save or spend elsewhere. But gardens also increase the accessibility of food. Rather than drive to the grocery store, you step into your yard. And consider food deserts, areas where there is no fresh food available. A garden can replenish a food desert with healthy, accessible food, in cities and rural areas where grocery stores are scarce. A plethora of gardens offers fresh and immediate food to those around--and they provide encouragement to step into the kitchen, to save money, explore food, and find company cooking at home rather than eating out or buying ready-made meals. Plant a garden, discovery the joys of cooking.

Your garden grows more than vegetables. Gardens grow us. Seeing tomatoes ripen on the vine and and unearthing potatoes changes the way we think of food. Gardening gives us appreciation for food and the food system that provides us with what we cannot grow ourselves. Gardens also connect us to other people. Whether it means getting outside with the kids, having a gardening partner, or bringing friends and family together around a meal from the garden for a meal truly worth your thanks. Gardening shows us the importance of our food and how it is produced and helps our lives revolve around what truly sustains us.