Terra's Garden
Monthly Column by Terra Hangen

Good news! Gardening uses calories, since it is a form of exercise, and you can get a good workout gardening.

While you are out in your beautiful garden, weeding, planting, digging or mowing your lawn, you are expending calories.

There were two books on this topic published in early 2008.

Jeffrey Restuccio’s book is titled Get Fit Through Gardening: Advice, Tips and Tools for Better Health and in it he recommends that you spend 30 minutes to an hour to get physical benefits from gardening. This means active gardening, not just admiring your roses.

Bunny Guinness, niece of David Austin, wrote Garden Your Way to Health and Fitness, which explains how to stay strong and injury free, while working in the garden.

There are two helpful websites that show how many calories different garden activities expend.

One site is www.calorie-count.com. Here we learn that for a person weighing 150 pounds, weeding uses 315 calories per hour, general gardening 280 calories per hour, planting seedlings or shrubs 315 calories, digging/spading/composting 350 calories, watering the lawn or garden while standing 105 calories, and mowing the lawn with a power mower while walking, 385 calories per hour.

The second site is www.healthstatus.com, with its Calories Burned Estimator. You type in your weight, select an activity, and the number of minutes and it gives you the calories you will use up. I typed in 120 pounds for weight, and found that gardening for one hour uses 320 calories, water aerobics 234 calories, talking on the phone 62 calories, riding a walking horse 148 calories, and intermediate Pilates exercise 304 calories per hour. Sleeping uses 63 calories per hour, sitting in church 70 calories, and preparing food 140 calories.

One thing I noticed while using various calorie counters is that they give different results, but general gardening uses on average 300 calories for an hour of steady work.

So we now have even more incentive to get out in our gardens and work there.

See, gardening is not only good for the soul but for our bodies too!

About the Author: For more of Terra Hangen's garden tidbits, fun garden photos of her black squirrel friend, tips for beginning writers, and a glimpse into her own journey as a writer visit her blog at http://terragarden.blogspot.com. She is celebrating the publication of her first book, Scrapbook of Christmas Firsts, written with 6 Christian writer friends, and scheduled for publication Oct. 2008 by Leafwood Publishers.

Photo of child planting a tree is courtesy of Dominion-Wide/Library and Archives Canada; copyright Library and Archives Canada.