Make Identifying Flowers a Snap With Easy-to-Read Plant Markers
What changes are you hoping to make in this New Year? Maybe 2016 is the year you want to start a garden or add to your landscaping. Gardening is a low-cost goal with many benefits and identifying flowers that you can add to your current landscape design may be a great way to change things up in the New Year.
Why add gardening to your 2016 goals?
1. Gardening can help you slow down. If you’re like many Americans, your life is fast-paced and you may not spend much time at home. You work hard to pay for a home (or condo or apartment) that you rarely take the time to enjoy. Making the decision to garden will help you to relax and smell the roses (or chives or whatever you happen to plant). Getting outside to dig in the soil and watch things grow has been shown to lower stress, improve depression and even reduce pain.
2. Take it up a notch. Gardening is also a good way to get more exercise – something that usually winds up somewhere on many New Year’s lists. Just moving around in your garden patch can burn 300-400 calories/hour – about as much as a brisk walk. If you need to get off the couch more, gardening is a great way to improve your mood and your waist size.
3. Take the long view. Learning new skills and engaging in new activities is good for your brain and helps you age more happily and healthfully. Several studies by behavioral and social scientists have revealed the long-term benefits of becoming a lifelong learner. So whether you decide to grow vegetables or work on identifying new flowers and learning about their growing conditions, both hold long-range benefits for you.
4. Take the chance to do something good. Gardening is one way that you can do something good for yourself, your family and the environment. Fresh, homegrown vegetables offer tremendous nutritional value. Your tomatoes, peppers or cucumbers will provide as much as 50 percent more nutrition compared to veggies trucked in from another part of the country. Flowers add beauty, fragrance and help to pollinators like bees and butterflies.
5. Take one step at a time. You don’t have to begin with a huge undertaking. In fact, it’s may be better if you start small. Grow an herb garden in pots on your deck or patio. Pick just one spot in your yard (along the fence, edging the front walkway, under the mailbox) and start with that. If you are too zealous right out of the gate the demands could discourage you.
At Kincaid Plant Markers, we provide supplies to professional gardeners, but we get excited every time someone decides to try their hand at gardening personally too. However large or small your garden next year be sure to make it the best it can be by using our quality plant markers. Identifying flowers, herbs and even rows of vegetables will be just one more reason on a list of reasons to put gardening on your New Year to –do- list.
