Showing posts with label GreenThumb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GreenThumb. Show all posts

Monday, November 24, 2025

Gardening’s Hidden Benefits: How Digging In The Dirt Could Bolster Mental Wellbeing

If you spend any time gardening, you probably understand what I mean when I say it feels good  despite the lifting, sweating and straining involved. Yes, exercise is good for our bodies, but there’s something about digging in the dirt while listening to a bird soundtrack that lifts my spirits. Even the scent of the soil and mulch makes me happy. As it turns out, there are scientific reasons for this……Continue reading….

By  Jessica Damiano

Source: AP News

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Gardening is considered by many people to be a relaxing activity. There are also many studies about the positive effects on mental and physical health in relation to gardening. Specifically, gardening is thought to increase self-esteem and reduce stress. As writer and former teacher Sarah Biddle notes, one’s garden may become a “tiny oasis to relax and recharge [one’s] batteries.”

Involving in gardening activities aids in creativity, observational skills, learning, planning and physical movement. Others consider gardening to be a good hedge against supply chain disruptions, with increased worries that the public cannot always trust that the grocery store shelves will be fully stocked. In April 2022, about 31% of grocery products were out of stock which is an 11% increase from November 2021.

Gardening can also support good numbers and a wide range of pollinators, but worryingly bees and other pollinators are in decline. Gardeners can make a difference to help reverse this trend. The main thing that matters is that they get their share of nectar to fuel their busy lifestyles, and this is where gardening can help them.

A way to both positively impact humans and pollinators is to implement pollinator gardens. Including native flowers has been shown to increase pollinators, and even protects bee populations against urbanization and landscapes that do not include flowers. Small patches in urban landscapes that are diverse in flowers have been noted to match or even exceed wild landscapes when it comes to bees pollinating.

Areas like golf courses, cemeteries, community gardens as well as residential gardens are all areas in urban settings that could benefit pollinator diversity by implementing native flowers to the landscape.Gardening can be difficult to differentiate from farming. They are most easily differentiated based on their primary objectives. Farming prioritizes saleable goods and may include livestock production, whereas gardening often prioritizes aesthetics and leisure.

As it pertains to food production, gardening generally happens on a much smaller scale with the intent of personal or community consumption. There are cultures which do not differentiate between farming and gardening. This is primarily because subsistence agriculture has been the main method of farming throughout its 12,000 year history and is virtually indistinguishable from gardening.

There is a wide range of garden ornaments and accessories available in the market for both the professional gardener and the amateur to exercise their creativity, for example, sculptures, lights or fountains. These are used to add decoration or functionality, and may be made from a wide range of materials such as copper, stone, wood, bamboo, stainless steel, clay, stained glass, concrete, or iron.

Examples include trellis, garden furniture, gnomes, statues, outdoor fireplaces, fountains, rain chains, urns, bird baths and feeders, wind chimes, and garden lighting such as candle lanterns and oil lamps. The use of these items can be part of the expression of a gardener’s gardening personality. Garden design is considered to be an art in most cultures, distinguished from gardening, which generally means garden maintenance.

Garden design can include different themes such as perennial, butterfly, wildlife, Japanese, water, tropical, or shade gardens. In Japan, Samurai and Zen monks were often required to build decorative gardens or practice related skills like flower arrangement known as ikebana. In 18th-century Europe, country estates were refashioned by landscape gardeners into formal gardens or landscaped park lands, such as at Versailles, France, or Stowe, England.

Today, landscape architects and garden designers continue to produce artistically creative designs for private garden spaces. In the US, professional landscape designers are certified by the Association of Professional Landscape Designers.

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Coyotes chewing on the plastic driplines and other gardening issues Orange County Register 17:56 Sat, 23 Aug 

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Sunday, November 9, 2025

Your Rosemary Plants Will Flourish If You Add This Simple Garden Staple To The Soil

Artfully79/Getty Images

Whether roasting a chicken or making homemade essential oil, a sprig of fresh rosemary plucked from your very own pot or garden bed makes all the difference. Rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus) is a common garden herb enjoyed not only for its multitude of uses and great earthy flavor but because it is relatively easy to grow. Outside, rosemary is generally hardy in USDA growing zones 8 to 10 and won’t last through a very cold winter. But rosemary can be grown year-round anywhere with enough sunlight and warmth, like an indoor windowsill……..Continue reading….

By Jennifer Davis

Source: Hunker

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Human cultivation of plants is the core of agriculture, which in turn has played a key role in the history of world civilizations. Humans depend on plants for food, either directly or as feed in animal husbandry. Agriculture includes agronomy for arable crops, horticulture for vegetables and fruit, and forestry for timber. About 7,000 species of plant have been used for food, though most of today’s food is derived from only 30 species.

The major staples include cereals such as rice and wheat, starchy roots and tubers such as cassava and potato, and legumes such as peas and beans. Vegetable oils such as olive oil and palm oil provide lipids, while fruit and vegetables contribute vitamins and minerals to the diet. Coffee, tea, and chocolate are major crops whose caffeine-containing products serve as mild stimulants. The study of plant uses by people is called economic botany or ethnobotany.

Medicinal plants are a primary source of organic compounds, both for their medicinal and physiological effects, and for the industrial synthesis of a vast array of organic chemicals. Many hundreds of medicines, as well as narcotics, are derived from plants, both traditional medicines used in herbalism and chemical substances purified from plants or first identified in them, sometimes by ethnobotanical search, and then synthesised for use in modern medicine.

Modern medicines derived from plants include aspirin, taxol, morphine, quinine, reserpine, colchicine, digitalis and vincristine. Plants used in herbalism include ginkgo, echinacea, feverfew, and Saint John’s wort. The pharmacopoeia of Dioscorides, De materia medica, describing some 600 medicinal plants, was written between 50 and 70 CE and remained in use in Europe and the Middle East until around 1600 CE; it was the precursor of all modern pharmacopoeias.

Plants grown as industrial crops are the source of a wide range of products used in manufacturing. Nonfood products include essential oils, natural dyes, pigments, waxes, resins, tannins, alkaloids, amber and cork. Products derived from plants include soaps, shampoos, perfumes, cosmetics, paint, varnish, turpentine, rubber, latex, lubricants, linoleum, plastics, inks, and gums. Renewable fuels from plants include firewood, peat and other biofuels.

The fossil fuels coal, petroleum and natural gas are derived from the remains of aquatic organisms including phytoplankton in geological time.Many of the coal fields date to the Carboniferous period of Earth’s history. Terrestrial plants also form type III kerogen, a source of natural gas. Structural resources and fibres from plants are used to construct dwellings and to manufacture clothing.

Wood is used for buildings, boats, and furniture, and for smaller items such as musical instruments and sports equipment. Wood is pulped to make paper and cardboard. Cloth is often made from cotton, flax, ramie or synthetic fibres such as rayon, derived from plant cellulose. Thread used to sew cloth likewise comes in large part from cotton.

Thousands of plant species are cultivated for their beauty and to provide shade, modify temperatures, reduce wind, abate noise, provide privacy, and reduce soil erosion. Plants are the basis of a multibillion-dollar per year tourism industry, which includes travel to historic gardens, national parks, rainforests, forests with colourful autumn leaves, and festivals such as Japan’s and America’s cherry blossom festivals.

Plants may be grown indoors as houseplants, or in specialized buildings such as greenhouses. Plants such as Venus flytrap, sensitive plant and resurrection plant are sold as novelties. Art forms specializing in the arrangement of cut or living plant include bonsai, ikebana, and the arrangement of cut or dried flowers. Ornamental plants have sometimes changed the course of history, as in tulipomania.

The traditional study of plants is the science of botany. Basic biological research has often used plants as its model organisms. In genetics, the breeding of pea plants allowed Gregor Mendel to derive the basic laws governing inheritance, and examination of chromosomes in maize allowed Barbara McClintock to demonstrate their connection to inherited traits. The plant Arabidopsis thaliana is used in laboratories as a model organism to understand how genes control the growth and development of plant structures.

Tree rings provide a method of dating in archeology, and a record of past climates. The study of plant fossils, or Paleobotany, provides information about the evolutions of plants, paleogeographical reconstructions, and past climate change. Plant fossils can also help determine the age of rocks. Plants including trees appear in mythology, religion, and literature. In multiple Indo-European, Siberian, and Native American religions, the world tree motif is depicted as a colossal tree growing on the earth, supporting the heavens, and with its roots reaching into the underworld.

It may also appear as a cosmic tree or an eagle and serpent tree. Forms of the world tree include the archetypal tree of life, which is in turn connected to the Eurasian concept of the sacred tree. Another widespread ancient motif, found for example in Iran, has a tree of life flanked by a pair of confronted animals. Flowers are often used as memorials, gifts and to mark special occasions such as births, deaths, weddings and holidays. Flower arrangements may be used to send hidden messages.

Weeds are commercially or aesthetically undesirable plants growing in managed environments such as in agriculture and gardens. People have spread many plants beyond their native ranges; some of these plants have become invasive, damaging existing ecosystems by displacing native species, and sometimes becoming serious weeds of cultivation. Some plants that produce windblown pollen, including grasses, invoke allergic reactions in people who suffer from hay fever.

Many plants produce toxins to protect themselves from herbivores. Major classes of plant toxins include alkaloids, terpenoids, and phenolics. These can be harmful to humans and livestock by ingestion or, as with poison ivy, by contact. Some plants have negative effects on other plants, preventing seedling growth or the growth of nearby plants by releasing allopathic chemicals.

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