Community Gardening - My reasons for Gardening this Summer

Our own community garden is an active place at the moment, with  some gardens just beginning to take shape, some showing obvious signs of plans for the many months ahead and others already harvesting for the first time. But as someone whose spent much more of her weekend than she’d care to admit weeding a garden, the long summer ahead managing a growing garden can seem  little daunting. Being still a little “green” in regards to our own community garden, I’ve come up with my own list, with some help from Google, for why I think community gardens are a great endeavor and why I’m personally looking forward to the next few months.

10. Time to spend time with family and friends. Maybe you’ve started this garden with an old friend or maybe you’ve started it to teach your kids about gardening or maybe you’ve started alone, but are planning to meet new people along the way. Either way, gardening is a great way to spend time outdoors with the people you care about.

9. Gardening, while it may not always seem like it, is great exercise. In fact, some researchers estimate that you burn between 300 and 400 calories in just one hour of gardening! Those hours you’ll spend weeding, planting and harvesting over the course of the summer are all fantastic forms of cardio and aerobic exercise and I for one look forward to seeing those results at the end of the season.  J

8. Planting and harvesting your own food also allows you to save on your monthly grocery bill, and those savings can go a long way.

7. Similarly, by growing your own food, you are by extension eating locally grown produce. Eating local foods, especially when it is produced without the use of machinery or pesticides helps reduce our carbon footprints and contributes to making our earth a little greener.

6. Speaking of greener, we’re also contributing to creating more green space in our community. Our location, which is already beginning to blossom with plants and produce, can in turn be enjoyed not only by us, the gardeners, but also by the dozens of people who come into the aviary as well.

5. As well as contributing to the green space in our area, we’re also fostering a sense of community by meeting and learning from our fellow gardeners.

4. Gardening is also a great way to spent time outdoors and enjoy the great weather we’ve been having (and hopefully will continue to have) so far this growing season.

3. I personally am also looking forward to learning from the more experienced gardeners and hopefully being able to pass on any knowledge I have on to others as well. Our community garden is a great way to not only try gardening out for ourselves but also see what others have done, swap tips and seeds, and overall have better gardens by the end of the season.

2. By growing our own food we’re also ensuring that we are eating, at least in part, healthy, organic, pesticide-free, fruits, vegetables and herbs. Andhere are literally hundreds of benefits to our health and environment in this fact alone.

1. Finally, I’m gardening this season for the sense of achievement I hope to have at the end of it. There’s nothing better than seeing a plot once covered in weeds that you can now garden on, watching seeds you planted grow and finally eating food that you grew yourself.

So there are my top ten reasons for why I’m gardening this season. Feel free to comment below if you have any more you’d like to add.

Happy gardening! 

My name's Laura Crump and I'm a third year student in the Arts and Science program at McMaster University. I've been gardening my whole life but this is my first year at Churchill Park Community Garden. I'm really looking forward to working here this summer, 2012.