What 2.5 Hours of Gardening a Week Can Do
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), moderate-intensity level activity for 2.5 hours each week can reduce the risk for obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, heart disease, stroke, depression, colon cancer, and premature death.
The CDC considers gardening a moderate-intensity level activity—meaning that gardening goes toward that 2.5-hour goal. Furthermore, people who garden for their moderate-intensity exercise are more likely to exercise 40 to 50 minutes longer on average than those that choose activities like walking or biking.
An Hour’s Worth of Gardening
If you are someone who pays attention to calories, here’s how many you can expect to burn per hour:
Heavy landscaping: 400-600 calories per hour
Raking the leaves: 350-450 calories per hour
Clearing the garden: 400 calories per hour
Mowing the lawn: 250-350 calories per hour
Weeding: 200-400 calories per hour
Planting flowers: 200-400 calories per hour
Watering: 120 calories per hour
But this is an average and will vary slightly based on age, weight, etc
Horticultural therapy—the practice of using gardens, plants, and horticultural activity to relieve physical and mental symptoms—is backed by science.
Decreased Dementia Risk
One 2006 study from St. Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst, Australia, set out to identify risk factors for dementia in an elderly Australian cohort. The researchers tracked more than 2,800 people over the age of 60 for 16 years and found that physical activity, particularly gardening, could reduce the incidence of dementia. Specifically, they concluded that gardening could lower the risk of dementia by 36 percent.4
Stress Relief
A Dutch study published in the Journal of Health Psychology found that gardening and reading each led to decreases in cortisol after a stressful task, but decreases were significantly stronger in the gardening group. Additionally, reported positive mood was fully restored after gardening but further deteriorated during reading.
And lest we forget the other perks of working in the dirt as well, including:
• Saving money on produce
• Saving money on a gym membership
• Conserving resources used in going to the gym
• Saving resources used for producing, packaging, and shipping commercial produce
• Ensuring your supply and increasing your intake of inexpensive organic fruit and vegetables
• Providing habitat for wildlife and especially pollinators
Of course, this is all provided that you have a bit of earth to call your own. If not, consider joining a community garden or volunteering at a park or public clean up …