As gardeners, we obviously already know plants are beneficial and it’s no secret we want to live our best and healthiest lives possible. After all, most of us want to enjoy life and the beautiful world that surrounds us. While it’s easy to say we want to be healthy, reaching this long term goal often leads us down a path filled with exercise, nutrition, and healthy life practices. Unfortunately, on this journey, we frequently encounter a world of costly gym memberships, medications, doctor visits, and more.
In fact, currently Americans pay 3.4 trillion dollars for medical care alone. If that number isn’t jaw dropping, we also need to factor in that every year we pay over 14 billion dollars out-of-pocket for complementary practitioners, almost 13 billion dollars on natural product supplements, and close to 3 billion dollars on other self-care approaches ranging anywhere from self-help books to homeopathic medicines. If we broke down all those additional totals, it averages out to each adult spending roughly 150 dollars annually on their pursuits to becoming healthier.
That’s a lot of green and, unfortunately, we aren’t able to cultivate our own dollars. Sure, overtime all of these changes and habits can help make healthy living a reality. However, many of us might be overlooking an amazing health benefit we already have blooming in our homes, gardens, and yards: flowers. Surprisingly, our favorite flowers can impact our health in some fascinating ways and there just might be some wisdom and truth in that old adage about the importance of taking time to stop and smell the roses.
When associating flowers with our health, we almost always think about allergies. While many flowers do produce pollens that triggers allergies, it’s important to note that there are plenty of allergy friendly plants to be found. With worries about allergies out of the way, we can focus on the mental health benefits and medicinal effects flowers can provide us. While we are spending billions and trillions on health, we could have been tapping into a plentiful resource already growing in our own backyards and local flower shops.
So give yourself a bouquet of flowers and scroll through the following infographic for more information on how flowers can impact your health:
