Gardening: The Happy Place

Aside from getting a serious cardiovascular workout, working with the soil has been proven to strengthen your immune system. Community gardens like the Good Shepherd Farm in Bridgehampton offer the perfect mix of exercise, fresh seasonal food, saving money, and helping support wildlife.

A bouquet of fresh cut flowers and herbs is the perfect environmentally friendly gift to bring to a party.

A wide variety of vegetables and herbs is key to good health and getting creative in the kitchen. Bridge Gardens, a beautiful public garden and great place for free gardening advice every Tuesday, also offers workshops covering everything from spring pruning to pickling vegetables.

Community gardens like the Good Shepherd Farm in Bridgehampton offer the perfect mix of exercise, fresh seasonal food, saving money, and helping support wildlife.

Some CSAs, like the one at Sylvester Manor, let young members pick their own flowers and produce. Gardening is a way of showing that you believe in tomorrow — Audrey Hepburn.

When I first joined a community garden and fellow gardener Cindy Warne told me she’d googled, “Is eating too many cherry tomatoes bad for you?” I thought she was, well, a teeny bit insane.

The problem with these little candy-sweet tomatoes is that they’re everywhere you turn, available all summer long and highly addictive.

But I was new to the Good Shepherd Farm in Bridgehampton, and that was months before I tasted my first cherry tomato. I was so naive. The problem with these little candy-sweet tomatoes is that they’re everywhere you turn, available all summer long and highly addictive. And that was just the tomatoes.

I joined this garden, not because I was already a gardener, but because I didn’t know anything about gardening. I’d lived in cities most of my life, where even my house plants were failed crops. To me, if you had a brown thumb it meant that at least something lived long enough to turn brown. The learning curve was high.

Luckily, at a community farm, you’ve got all kinds of gardeners with all kinds of knowledge, ranging from Certified Master Gardeners to newbies like me who, left to their own devices, could kill a plastic fern.

Every week, and possibly just through osmosis, I’m learning something new. Not just about gardening, but about plants I hardly knew existed. I learned how to cook with lemon grass and lavender thyme. I discovered that throwing lovage or sorrel in a salad would spice it up. It seems that just about everything can make a medicinal tea — cat nip, feverfew, and something called horehound that helps with loss of appetite. And lo and behold — stevia is more than just a little green package of sweetener offered in health food stores.

Throwing lovage or sorrel in a salad would spice it up.

Whether joining a community garden, farm CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), or growing spices at home, gardening offers the perfect combination of everything that’s good for us: healthy food, exercise, improved mental health, and supporting a healthier environment. Plus, you save money, which is very good for one’s health.

Gardening has taught me to eat what’s in season, rather than running around hunting down a kiwi just because I’m in the mood for it. Luckily, on the East End, the seasons are long, stretching from June through October. November, if you count the garlic, onions, leeks, pumpkin, squash, and sweet potatoes. A few years ago, I’d never heard of a Jerusalem artichoke. Now I’m picking them in December. The season is extended even further if you’re freezing tomato and pesto sauce and drying sage, dill, parsley, and chives.

Eating what’s in season, rather than running around hunting down a kiwi just because I’m in the mood for it.

Food grown locally makes a big difference in helping mitigate global warming and improving the local environment. Locally grown produce reduces “carbon miles,” the distance from the farm to your table. On average, food in the U.S. travels over 1,000 miles to get to our store shelves. The fossil fuel consumed for this long distance haul is responsible for up to 17 times more CO2 emissions than locally grown food. Organic gardens that are close to home create almost zero carbon emissions and even function as a carbon sink, drawing carbon back into the soil.

Locally grown produce reduces “carbon miles,” the distance from the farm to your table.

Community gardens and CSAs typically find natural ways to control weeds and pests. At our farm, rather than using insecticides, we take a preventative approach, encouraging good bugs like praying mantis, who eat the “bad” bugs. Rather than using synthetic fertilizer, we compost to return nutrients back to the soil.

We compost to return nutrients back to the soil.

In an age where so many natural habitats have been bulldozed to build homes, gardens give birds, bees, butterflies, and other wildlife a refuge and a chemical-free food source.

Gardens give birds, bees, butterflies, and other wildlife a refuge and a chemical-free food source.

Then there’s the flavor factor. A cherry tomato that comes from California is often genetically modified to travel better. It might be “engineered” for thicker skin and to be less juicy so it doesn’t crush easily. Usually, it’s picked long before it’s ripe, so it never reaches its full flavor.

A cherry tomato that comes from California is often genetically modified to travel better.

Or it’s injected with chemicals to prolong its life. As food is transported, what little nutritional value it had to begin with begins to degrade. By the time we get this Frankenfood, it’s basically cardboard disguised as a tomato.

Gardening is an underrated form of exercise. The American Heart Association may classify it as “moderate exercise,” but when I’m shoveling heavy compost in the heat, I’d beg to differ. Gardening helps improve muscle strength, endurance, and mobility. Digging in the dirt can even help enhance bone density as one study by the University of Arkansas revealed.

Gardening helps improve muscle strength, endurance, and mobility.

In terms of long-term health, gardening lowers blood pressure and cholesterol, and reduces the risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses.

Gardening lowers blood pressure and cholesterol, and reduces the risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses.

Beyond the physical benefits, gardening improves mental health. An article in the Journal of Environmental Horticulture outlines the numerous psychological benefits of gardening: It increases creativity and productivity, decreases depression, and mitigates the effects of PTSD. Breaking up your workday to get into the garden has also been shown to improve concentration and memory. It can also help reduce the effects of dementia.

Gardening improves mental health.

Even the dirt itself has powerful mood-enhancing microbes. Putting your hands in the soil releases a feel-good bacterium called Mycobacterium vaccae that can trigger the release of serotonin in the brain and ground the nervous system. According to the National Library of Medicine, “Some soil microbes have effects comparable to Prozac.”

Putting your hands in the soil releases a feel-good bacterium called Mycobacterium vaccae.

Whatever the neuropsychological data reveals, I’ve heard people in our garden call it their “happy place.”

Gardening is an underrated form of exercise.

For me, there are benefits that seem too intangible to be quantified in medical studies. Maybe it’s the pride of looking at my salad and knowing I grew everything in it myself. Or the Zen of focusing on what I’m doing long enough to forget the outside world. It could be the olfactory pleasure of deadheading basil or weeding around fennel plants. Or leaving the garden with stained yellow fingers smelling like one of those high-end tomato-scented candles. That’s the time when all is good with the world.

Gardening is an underrated form of exercise.

The cha-ching factor is enormous. Considering the $10 quart of cherry tomatoes offered at most Hamptons farm stands, community farms and CSAs are a bargain. At community gardens, we pay in hours “worked” in exchange for an abundance of produce. Not to mention what a big bouquet of fresh flowers would cost every week.

Community farms and CSAs are a bargain.

If working in a community garden feels like a huge time commitment, joining a CSA at a sustainably minded farm is a good way to eat healthy and support local farmers. Because your weekly box of seasonal food will always be a surprise, you learn to get creative in the kitchen. And while you don’t do the down-and-dirty part of gardening, CSAs like Amber Waves, Quail Hill, and Sylvester Manor let you pick your own veggies, herbs, and flowers.

Joining a CSA at a sustainably minded farm is a good way to eat healthy and support local farmers.