If you are a senior who is looking to take up a new hobby or pass-time you can’t go past gardening. Gardening is often an activity that seniors like to partake in because it is an activity that is peaceful and does not require a lot of moving around.
Reasons Why Gardening is Great for Seniors
However, there are several reasons why gardening is great for seniors and some of them are more interesting than you would think.
1. Gets you back to nature
Seniors tend to spend a lot more of their time indoors than the rest of us, so gardening is a great way for them to get back to nature and get outside. When you spend a lot of time indoors, you tend to lack some of the vital nutrients that you need to be healthy.
Regularly getting outside to get some fresh air and some vitamin D from the sun is very important for elderly people, because it will help them to stay fit and healthy for as long as they can. So, if you start to garden outside in your backyard, you will be able to get these benefits every time you go outside.
Just remember to wear a hat and sun protection if you plan on being outside for an extended period of time.
2. Helps improve your mental health
If you want to improve your mental health, gardening is great for making you feel better. Gardening is very good for your mental health because it allows you to care for and nurture something else other than yourself.
A lot of people feel a sense of purpose when they start to look after something living like a plant or an animal, and this is great for seniors because they often tend to feel sad and undervalued as they get older.
Also, if you look after a plant enough, you can see how much your love and attention makes an impact because the plant will start to grow big and strong.
Gardening has also been proven to be great for people who have dementia because it helps them to feel useful even when they can’t remember things very well, so it can give them a big self-esteem boost and help to improve their mental health.
3. Great for your physical health
Although gardening is not a very physically intense activity, it can be great for your physical health because it gets you out and moving.
Some seniors have disabilities or issues that can stop them from getting out and exercising, but gardening allows you to get out and move around without over-exerting yourself.
When you are gardening, you are moving around all the time, whether it is to sow some seeds, dig a hole, water your plants or move your favorite pots around, you are always on the go when you are in the garden, even if you don’t realize it.
Also, when you are doing all of this moving around you are using different muscles to do so, and you might not use these muscles when you are doing other forms of exercise.
4. Can be done anywhere
Gardening is great for seniors because it can be done anywhere, no matter where you live. Most people think that you have to have a big backyard or a huge patch of land to start gardening but you don’t have to have the space for a garden to start a garden.
If you are passionate about gardening and you don’t have to space for a garden, you should start gardening in a few small pots.
You can even start gardening indoors if you don’t have any outdoor space by buying a little planter box to hang on a windowsill, or why not grow some herbs to add to your favorite meals in the kitchen? The choice is up to you and there are plenty of gardening options for people with limited space.
Even people who live in an aged care facility like Banfields Aged Care can become gardeners because they can have plants with them in their rooms, so you should not stop yourself from being a gardener just because you don’t have a lot of space.
5. Helps you to relax
If you are looking for a hobby that allows you to relax and unwind each day, you should get into gardening. Gardening is a very peaceful activity because you don’t have to talk to anyone while you do it if you don’t want to, and you can just focus on looking after the plants in your own space.
Many people spend hours at a time in their garden tending to their plants because they like to not have to worry about other things and they can escape into their own world.
Another thing that makes gardening so peaceful is that you don’t have to rush anything and everything can be done at your own pace. This is something that most seniors enjoy about gardening because they know that good things take time to grow, so they can go at their own pace without having to worry about other people.
Gardening is a great hobby for anyone to start doing, but for seniors who have a lot of time on their hands it can be a really good thing for them to try.
If you have never done any gardening before, you can just do some research and start with something simple from your local gardening store and work your way up to some more challenging plants to look after.
If you have limitations to your gardening due to space or time constraints, just try and find a plant that takes minimal looking after and then you can still get the benefits from looking after a plant and gardening.
Via: LeisureCare | BetterHealth
