Community Garden Club was vital to Chilton Health and Back-to-School Expo

Health is a gift.

Health refers to the physical, mental, and spiritual state of a human being. Remaining healthy is not an option but a necessity to a joy-filled and active life. Yet, there are varying ways to be healthy.

Health is the state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease, or infirmity. Wellness is an active process through which people become aware of, and make choices toward, a more successful existence. Towards that active choice-making process, the Community Garden Club of Marlin, which boasts its establishment in 1923 and Texas certified the oldest registered garden club in the State of Texas, recognizes the basic law of good health is related to the food one eats.

Planting flowers and vegetables can reap bountiful bouquets and delicious harvests for your dining table. But did you know gardening also does wonders for your well-being?

Here are surprising health benefits of gardening. 

1) Gardening can build self-esteem. “It always feels good to accomplish new tasks, and if you can grow a garden, what can’t you do?” asked a school nurse. 

2) Gardening is good for your heart. “I can feel it! All that digging, planting and weeding burned calories and strengthened my heart,” remarks a gardener. 

3) Gardening reduces stress. “Gardening gives you a chance to focus on something and put your mind to work with a goal and a task in mind,” UNC Dr. Hutchins (MD, MPH, practices at Chapel Hill Internal Medicine and The Carolina Clinic) says, “which is helpful especially now with so much illness and death and talk of death, just to see things growing and things thriving.”

4) Gardening can make you happy. Getting dirt under your nails while digging in the ground can make you pretty happy. In fact, inhaling Mycobacterium vaccae, a healthy bacteria that lives in soil, can increase levels of serotonin and reduce anxiety. But gardener Letitia Estep explained to children and adults alike, “If you do not want that extra soil, a simple trick to avoid dirty fingernails when gardening without wearing gloves is to scratch your nails into a bar of soap. It creates a barrier and keeps them clean; where soap is, dirt cannot be.”

5) Gardening can improve hand strength. What a great way to keep hands and fingers as strong as possible for as long as possible.

6) Gardening is good for the whole family. Gardening can be a solo activity or an opportunity for bonding with family and friends. The happiness and stress relief that gardening provides is a great thing to share with loved ones. Also, gardening has special benefits for children. Early exposure to dirt (preferably soil) has been linked to numerous health benefits, from reducing allergies to autoimmune diseases. 

7) Gardening can give one a boost of vitamin D. A healthy dose of vitamin D increases calcium levels, which benefits one’s bones and immune system. Exposure to sunlight helps older adults achieve adequate amounts of vitamin D. Just don’t forget the sunscreen!

8) Growing your own food can help you eat more healthily. From children on up, it is a great way to develop good habits. The result can mean fewer health problems. From a vegetable or herb or fruit garden, one is getting fresh produce that one knows hasn’t been treated with pesticides. “It’s essentially as farm-to-table as it gets,” Horticulture Instructor Madelyn Healey once assured her students, “if you’re eating what you’re growing.”

This writer is adding a ninth benefit, an especially important one to parents and single individuals alike: It saves money. With steady, rotation planting plans, homegrown fresh produce and herbs can be enjoyed at a cost-saving budget. For example, one pound of organic tomatoes from Whole Foods costs $3.29 as of June 2024, but a package of organic, heirloom tomato seeds that can yield multiple tomato plants over time, costs $4.99. To put it into perspective, one tomato plant may equal 10 lbs. to 30 lbs. of tomatoes. Additionally, one saves money by producing a free, high-quality soil amendment – compost – which builds healthier soil, prevents soil erosion, conserves water, and improves plant growth in the garden, container plants, and yard.    

An observation at the Chilton Health and Back-to-School Expo was that there was a fundamental and phenomenal interest across the ages in gardening or having plants. Each individual received a round earth bag containing growing tips for vegetables, recipes for spinach, Container Gardening Easy How-to’s in either English or Spanish, seeds and natural fiber potting vessels, and gloves.  

The Community Garden Club of Marlin held numerous drawings. There were gardening hand tool sets featuring metal hand trowels, self-watering globes for plants, planter pots on a stand, suet block and hanging metal suet cage, watering can, seeds, and a much admired hanging cedar bird feeder with a bag of seeds for Texas wild birds..

There are ways to stretch your dollars and it is possible to start a food garden on a shoestring budget. 

Consider these three suggestions to get started. 

1) Start early with seeds. At a few dollars a package (or less), gardeners can give their plants a home-grown start. 

2) Give container or square-foot gardening a try. This popular gardening technique isn’t just highly effective at producing the healthiest plants with the smallest effort, it’s affordable, too. 

3) Grow only what you need and like to eat. While it’s nice to have an abundance of produce to share with family and friends, the upkeep of a larger-than-life garden could be too expensive and too much effort to maintain. Also, don’t plant vegetables and fruits that your family doesn’t eat. It may be cheap to plant rows of zucchini plants, but if no one likes zucchini, that’s a lot of wasted produce.

“This has changed my life, ‘cause I know y’all will teach me to grow my own vegetables!” remarked one guest at The Expo. Yes, throughout its 101+ years’ history, the Community Garden Club has hosted educational lectures focusing on a variety of different gardening topics, including garden design, floral arrangements, and botanical histories. The club continues to serve the community of Marlin by engaging in civic beautification projects of local parks, city and county buildings, county hospital, and coming soon, the large community garden beds located one block west of the traffic signal. The Marlin Community Garden Club has 22 members and continues its monthly meetings held June through September on the third Friday, at 2:00 pm, at the Senior Citizens Center, Marlin.   To anyone interested in learning more, contact Letitia Estep at 903-286-3671.

Finally, to all, “You are never too old to play in the dirt [soil]!”

Photograph is in a separate email. Thank you!