5 Types of Gardens for Your Home

Gardening is a wonderful hobby that can be both visually pleasing from flowers and foliage and a great way to provide some food for your home with herbs, fruits, and vegetables. Many people start gardening because it provides wonderful benefits, including:

• Improved physical and mental health
• The value of patience and caring for another living thing
• The opportunity to create and design your space
• Improved air quality and chance of getting Vitamin D
• Healthy food and beautiful flowers to enjoy and gift to others
• Helping pollinators like bees and butterflies with special pollinator-friendly plants
• Reconnecting with nature on a scale that works for you

Whether you live in a house with a backyard, a complex with a designated gardening plot, or an apartment with space to create, here are different types of gardens to explore, however big or small you want.

1. Outdoor Garden

Gardening helps you socialize with others, get some Vitamin D, and learn how to be patient and continue to protect your growing plants against many odds. Outdoor gardening is the biggest option for people to do at home if given the space, so there are some different pros and cons to consider.

Pros:

• Larger area to grow food or create a beautiful area to sit in
• More time outdoors for fresh air and sunlight
• Plenty of room to garden with friends, family, and other gardeners
• More opportunities to support and invite beautiful pollinators to your space

Cons:

• More equipment needed to create and maintain the garden, requiring more space and money
• Pests like weeds, disease, and hungry animals
• Needing to protect your garden under certain weather conditions
• Body aches from kneeling to work the garden all day

2. Container Garden

If you have a porch, balcony, or beautiful vase you want to stick to for your garden, you can always downsize to a container garden. Consider these tips when creating a container garden:

• Choose the spot for your container garden first so you’ll know what environment your plant will be growing in, such as cramped versus spacious or sunny versus shaded.
• Research plants that are harmful to pets if you have one so you can protect them.
• Pay attention to the label when buying your plants to see how much sun and water it needs and how big it will grow. You want to pick plants that work with your chosen spot and fit into your container.
• If you want to grow different types of plants, separate them into devoted containers so you’ll know where to collect them for your desired needs, like herbs or flowers.
• Choose pots with drainage holes to promote good root development and prevent rotting.
• Remember to get fertilizer, and for the best results, add a granular continuous-release plant food to the soil in your container, then add water-soluble fertilizer to your watering apparatus once every other week.

3. Kitchen or Indoor Garden

You could knock out two birds with one stone and grow a garden indoors while becoming a skilled chef! Whether you want plants throughout your home to liven up the place or plants in your kitchen when the cooking gets going, it’s easy to still be an indoor gardener. There are many benefits to growing a kitchen or indoor garden, including:

• Saving money and trips to the grocery store
• Growing a variety of healthy fruits, vegetables, and herbs to eat
• Teaching kids how to garden on a small scale
• Growing medicinal plants like aloe vera, ashwagandha, basil, curry leaves, lemons, and vinca rosa

4. Hydroponic Garden

If soil is a lot more work (and perhaps mess!) for you to handle in your gardening, you can always try hydroponic gardening. This is a versatile process of growing plants in water and fertilizer without using soil, and it can be as small as a mason jar or as big as a structured PVC pipe system. Here are some plants that do well in a hydroponic garden:

• Beans
• Beetroot
• Bok choy
• Celery
• Chard
• Cucumbers
• Eggplant
• Green onions
• Herbs
• Kale
• Lettuce
• Mustard greens
• Peas
• Peppers
• Radish
• Spinach
• Strawberries
• Tomatoes

5. Vertical Garden

Whether you want to save space or dress your walls, a vertical garden is a great option to conveniently liven your home with minimal maintenance. There are many ways that you can grow your climbing flowers or tasty plants vertically:

• Arches
• Green or living walls or picture frames
• Gutter gardens
• Hanging baskets
• Obelisks
• Tier gardens
• Trellis gardens
• Window boxes

Are you getting excited thinking about how you’ll spend your time in retirement? Explore all the things you could do in our ebook, Lifestyle Opportunities in Senior Living Communities!

At Life Enriching Communities (LEC), we’re committed to ensuring patrons feel well-equipped to plan their future and age how they wish. Explore more resources on senior living or contact us today to learn more about our legacy of services and programs that bring meaning and purpose to every stage of life.