Home Gardening Offers More than Just Food

Home gardening has been a national pastime for almost as long as there have been Europeans in America, and growing food has been important for a much longer period. Home gardening on a family based scale has gone from an absolute necessity for most of the population to a hobby for many in today’s world. Along the way there have been formal gardens, research gardens, and plant breeding gardens alongside the ever-present, humble home garden that provided fresh produce for the house. Many of the benefits of the home garden have been material in nature; a source of fresh vegetables when grocery stores had no coolers, money saved by growing one’s own food, better nutrition compared to the canned or aged offerings on the local shelves. Let’s look at just a few of the less than obvious benefits of a home garden that are not strictly physical in nature, but are valuable products of the garden nevertheless.