A recent survey, asked gardeners why they gardened, and here are the Top Ten reasons given. Drum roll, please

#10 For lasting memories

I must confess; this wouldn’t have made my list. But then again, my lasting garden memories mostly consist of, how many times I flooded my greenhouse because I forgot to turn the water off. But I can see how people, who actually had memories, would want to pass them on to their children and grandchildren. “Yes, little Suzy, back in my day, we had this stuff called soil...”

#9 To fulfil emotional needs

Gardening offers people a chance to develop their nurturing side, to give life to a chunk of soil. And for many people, a garden can provide a tranquil retreat, a beautiful and bountiful haven, where they can forget about the stresses of everyday life. For me, gardening allows me to fulfil a different emotional need. I just love jerking weeds out of the ground and ripping them to shreds.

#8 For the competition

I don’t enter anything in the local fair, so I wouldn’t even have thought of this reason. But in the United States, clubs heavily promote gardening, which serves as an educational opportunity for children and a healthy avenue for them to get recognition. It reminds me of how proud my neighbours’ child was, when she won a couple of ribbons at the fair for her squash decorations. And that, in turn, reminds me of when I was a kid and I won a ribbon for my pottery ashtray, only I was trying to make a vase!

#7 As an outlet for creative and artistic creativity

I have a friend who has an incredible garden. It’s more of a path, really, that meanders through his creative rock work, his beautiful patches of flowers, his exotic ferns and his fish fossils. Each new turn in the path holds a fresh surprise. And I can appreciate how other friends experiment with new flowers or crops every year. A brave friend of mine once hired me to put in a simple rock garden for her. It was my first time building one, and I had a lot of fun letting my creative side take over. And her glorious flowers did a great job of covering up my rock work.

#6 As an opportunity to meet people

Once I was at a friends’ house when an elderly couple she didn’t know stopped and asked her if they could walk through her flower gardens. My friend smiled with delight and gave them an hour-long tour, giving them the names and histories of some of her favourite plants, explaining where she got some of the bulbs or seeds, and touching on a dozen other topics. They asked her lots of questions, and spent a lot of time admiring the beautiful flowers. But for some reason, they didn’t spend much time at the rock garden.

#5 To make money

Having a green thumb can definitely lead to acquiring some of the green stuff. Landscapers can make a lot of money because landscaping can increase the resale value of a house by as much as 15%. And gardeners can sell flowers, vegetables or herbs at local farmers’ markets or craft shows. When I was a kid, my brothers and I decided to raise a quarter acre of tomatoes as a project to make money. One day when we were picking them, my oldest brother threw a rotten tomato at me, and I retaliated with an equally rotten one. Then my other brother got into the act, and soon the air was filled with tomatoes. After a few volleys, we didn’t have time to search for rotten ones, so we grabbed anything that was handy. We had a blast. The only problem was, after the tomato fight, we had very few tomatoes left on the bushes.

#4 To learn something new

I can see how retired people, especially, would take to gardening for this reason. Psychiatrists say, it’s vital for retired people to continue to learn new things, and gardening is a constructive, rewarding and challenging endeavour, that requires continual learning.

#3 For the beauty

A lot of people like to surround themselves with beauty, which is probably one reason I live alone. A friend of mine used her beautiful flower garden, to bond with her new daughter-in-law. The daughter-in-law discovered she had a real talent for flower arrangements, so my friend hired her to do some flower arrangements that she gave to friends as presents. And of course, my friends’ house was filled with vases of creative flower arrangements.

#2 For the exercise

I’ve never understood exercise machines. We buy all these labour-saving devices so we won’t have to work as hard, and then we buy exercise machines so we can spend more time working even harder. That’s why gardening for exercise makes so much sense. Doing constructive work, getting closer to Mother Nature, getting dirt under your fingernails, I love to garden because it gets me away from my computer. But then again, these days I don’t have time to garden because I’m always on my computer, writing about gardening.

#1 For the safe and healthy food

Though some of the above reasons wouldn’t make my Top Ten list, I whole-heartedly agree with this one as my top reason for gardening. With the increase in genetically-engineered crops, irradiated herbs, pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, antibiotics and plastic in cattle feed, mercury in commercial fish, mad cow disease, etc, it’s nice to know you can grow your own food that’s safe, and full of nutrients especially if you raise it organically. The only thing that isn’t safe about gardening is when the green tomatoes start flying.

There are a couple reasons for gardening that aren’t mentioned above that would make my list, both of them toward the top. One would be taste. Vine-ripened, organically grown vegetables are light years ahead of grocery store vegetables. The only problem I have with the tomatoes I grow is that I sometimes wolf them down so fast I almost choke to death.

The other Top Ten reason I’d add, and it might be #2 on my list, would be, because organic gardening is one small thing I can do, to make the world a better place. The human race is sometimes almost a plague upon the planet, the way we poison it every day with chemicals from our factories, and the way we disrupt and destroy nature, just to satisfy our own greed and desires. Building the soil and creating a living environment where birds, bees, lady bugs and earthworms can flourish, makes me feel like I’ve done something that, has contributed something of value to the planet.

(This is an article from within the first edition of the Backyard Farming Magazine. The complete magazine is available as an electronic download by clicking here.)