For the first time in several years, I’m getting back in my garden.

One reason is simple economics. Like most of you, I’ve watched grocery prices climb. I’ve been making adjustments to my shopping list and seeking other practical ways to offset those costs. Every tomato, pepper, potato, or carrot I can grow myself is one less that I’ll need to buy at the store. Gardening may not eliminate my grocery bill, but it will certainly help soften the blow.

Of course, gardening is also a trade-off. Growing food requires an investment. Preparing the beds, planting seeds or starts, watering, weeding, harvesting, and eventually preparing or preserving the bounty all require my time and effort. I must feed my garden long before it feeds me.

Which brings me to another reason I’m gardening again: I finally have the time.

If you’ve read my previous columns, you may remember that I’ve been practicing the art of saying “no.” As it turns out, saying “no” has a direct impact on available hours in the day. By protecting my time a little more carefully, I’ve created space for things that nourish me instead of simply filling it with whatever comes my way.

And gardening nourishes both my mind and body in multiple ways.

Garden time is timeless. Much like writing, when I’m working in the garden, I lose all sense of time. I don’t know whether 10 minutes have passed or three hours. I simply am. For me, the garden provides the perfect conditions for being fully in the present moment, which is the truest path to a life well-lived.

Most of the work I do requires me to sit at a computer interacting with a screen. Gardening helps keep me grounded and allows me to reconnect to the tangible world that I live in.

There’s something deeply therapeutic about putting your hands in the soil and working outdoors. Scientific research continues to show what many gardeners have instinctively known all along: interacting with soil can positively affect both physical and mental health. Certain beneficial soil microorganisms, like Mycobacterium vaccae, have been linked to improved mood and reduced stress by supporting the connection between the gut and the brain. Additionally, exposure to plant-life, sunlight, fresh air, and moderate physical activity all contribute to lower stress levels and improved well-being.

Growing my own vegetables also gives me access to the freshest produce possible. The nutritional quality of vegetables begins to decline almost immediately after harvest as natural chemical changes occur during storage and transportation. Produce grown just steps away from my kitchen travels from garden to table within minutes or hours instead of days or weeks. Fresher food not only tastes better, but it also retains more of the nutrients my body needs.

Eating from the garden also reminds me of the value of eating seasonally. We all know the difference between a winter tomato – pale, mealy, flavorless – and a summer tomato: vibrant, juicy flesh, and packed with flavor. Green beans, peppers, cucumbers, carrots, everything tastes better when it's grown in the proper conditions and harvested at peak ripeness. I can also use preservation methods to extend the life of my garden harvest and stave off my need for imported out-of-season produce even longer.

I appreciate knowing exactly how my food was grown. Gardening allows me to control what chemicals, fertilizers, or pesticides are, or are not, used on the food my family eats. That same control extends to the land itself. Sustainable gardening practices help protect soil health, pollinators, groundwater, and the broader ecosystem right outside my front door.

My garden also reminds me that food does not magically appear on grocery store shelves.

Most commercially-grown produce travels hundreds or even thousands of miles before reaching our kitchens, requiring fuel, refrigeration, packaging, and storage along the way. My garden vegetables travel approximately 50 yards from my plot to my plate. They require no plastic packaging, no large-scale transportation, and very little refrigeration. They are fresher, less resource-intensive, last longer, and taste better because they weren’t picked early and forced to ripen under controlled conditions before spending days in transit.

Vegetable gardening naturally encourages me to waste less. For one thing, I find it harder to toss out food I’ve labored over; I’m more willing to find ways to use scraps or recover what I can from compromised garden fare than I am with store-bought vegetables. And, I can transform what I can’t recover into compost to feed next year’s garden.

Finally, the benefits of gardening are not limited to just vegetable gardens. Pollinator-friendly gardens contribute to a healthier local ecosystem by supporting the bees, butterflies, and other pollinating insects that our larger food systems depend upon. Annual and perennial flower gardens may not produce food, but they do provide the same mental and physical benefits that come from gardening with the added bonus of beautiful flowers to bring brightness to our lives.

Will my small garden change the world? Probably not.

But sustainability grows from many small choices made and actions taken consistently over time. My garden reminds me that living sustainably doesn’t have to be perfect or complicated. Sometimes it simply means growing what I can, using what I have, wasting less, and reconnecting with the rhythms of the natural world.

For all of these reasons, I’m embracing my return to the garden this spring, and I can’t wait to enjoy the harvest throughout the growing season and beyond.