Mental and Physical Health: It is well known that being outdoors and working with nature and our soil is good for our mental and physical health.  Vitamin D is obtained naturally from sunlight.  Many of us are deficient in Vitamin D, which is important for bone and muscle development and can help the immune system amoung other benefits.  Creating a vegetable garden provides access to healthy food as well as physical exercise.  Gardeners are often a friendly bunch and love to support each other.  This encourages social engagement with others that have similar interests and the ability to continuously learn new things.  

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Knowing where your food comes from:  How often do you pick something up from the supermarket and notice that it is imported into New Zealand?  Where did that tomato come from?  How was it grown?  Was it sprayed to help it grow more or to keep pests off it.  What else am I eating when I eat this item?  When you grow your own you get to make the choices about how your food is grown and what you add to it.  You know exactly what you are putting into your body.  

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Taste:  You will often find that the food you grow in your own garden tastes different from those grown by big companies.  This can be dependent on how the item is grown, the breed of fruit/vegetable grown and if they were sprayed or had inorganic fertilisers used to grow them.  A tomato grown in your own glasshouse with no artificial lighting or heating can be quite different from one commercially grown in the middle of winter.  Commercial growers tend to grow large quantities of basic food that they know will sell at the supermarket.  If you grow your own through seeds you can have access to numerous different types of any vegetable i.e. instead of just red tomatoes you can get purple, yellow and striped ones. 

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Budget:  Gardening can be done cheaply.  It is not a case that everyone should garden to save money.  At times it can be more expensive when you take into account the cost and time to grow your own food.  It also takes planning to ensure you have vegetables available when you want or need them.  However, you can save money by growing your own food, if you are aware of what is best value to grow, if you grow seasonal vegetables and if you grow what you will eat.

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Access to difficult to find foods:  Depending on what you eat, some of the ingredients may be unavailable or hard to get here in New Zealand.  If you have lived overseas you may be used to different vegetables than those commercially grown here in NZ or you may just like some vegetables and fruit that are not commonly sold here because of the difficulty keeping them looking and tasting at their optimum i.e. fresh figs.

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Having a beautiful space:  There is something quite satisfying being able to go out to your garden and enjoy if for the smells and visual delights it can bring.  Even if you don't love gardening you can often find pleasure in the small things a garden can bring, like butterflies, bees, birds, a quiet space and even a nice lawn to lie on.

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