What is it about gardening that has always drawn humans to them? They’ve always been very popular, and an integral part of peoples’ lifestyles. Most religions feature gardens as the settings for some of the biggest events. According to Christianity, humanity was started in a garden and the son of God was resurrected in a garden. Almost every major palace and government building has a garden.
Food Gardens
Of course, the reasoning is fairly obvious behind why people grow food in gardens. It’s to eat! If you live off the fat of the land and actually survive on stuff from gardening, it’s easy to understand the reason. But what about those people who plant flower gardens just for the sake of looking nice. There’s no immediate benefit that is seen; you just have a bunch of beautiful flowers in your yard! However, there are several possible theories about the motivation behind planting decorative gardens aside from the esthetical appeal.
Comfort Through Gardening
One of the reasons people love gardening so much is that while we have a natural desire to progress and industrialize, deep within all of us is a primal love for nature. While this desire might not be as strong as the desire for modernism, it is still strong enough to compel us to create gardens, small outlets of nature, in the midst of all our hustle and bustle. Since being in nature is like regressing to an earlier stage of humanity, we too can regress to a time of comfort and utter happiness. This is why gardens are so relaxing and calming to be in. This is why gardens are a good place to meditate and do tai chi exercises. A garden is a way to quickly escape from the busy world.
A Healthy Habit
Perhaps we as humans feel a sort of guilt driving us to restore nature and care for it. This guilt could stem from the knowledge that we, not personally but as a race, have removed so much of nature to get where we are today. It’s the least we can do to build a small garden in remembrance of all the trees, flora, and vegetation that have been replaced with roads, buildings, and other structures. This may be the underlying reason for most people to take up gardening as a hobby. Gardening is definitely a healthy habit. Any hobby that provides physical exercise, helps the environment and improves your diet can’t be a negative thing. So no matter what the underlying psychological cause for gardening is, everyone who can garden should continue to do so. If you haven’t yet, why wait?
What is it that makes people go outside for a few hours every day with gardening tools, and facilitates the small-time growth of plants that would grow naturally on their own? We may never know, but in this case, ignorance truly is bliss.
