Whether you plant flowers, vegetables or both working outside gardening can be a relaxing experience. Although at times it can seem like back-breaking labor, but in the end when the flowers are blooming and the vegetables are ready to be harvested, gardening can offer rewards like few other activities. In the first weeks when your seeds are still under the ground, it may seem like all your work preparing the soil was for nothing, but from the time the first sprouts start poking up through the ground, all the hard work is forgotten.

However, just because the plants are beginning to show signs of life does not mean the work is over. Your efforts have probably produced some pretty good soil and the flowers or vegetables are not the only things liking the surrounding. Weeds add another dimension to your gardening efforts and many of those will grow bigger and faster when you pay less attention to them.

Depending on the size of the plots you put in the ground, gardening has a profound affect on the appearance of your yard. Flowers can provide bursts of color throughout the area and help brighten otherwise dull corners of the yard. A few raised flower beds scattered around a large yard can help visually break up the area and reduce the amount of grass cutting you have to do…leaving more time for weeding.

Eating What You Grow Is a Wonderful Experience

There is nothing quite like the taste of fresh vegetables and no matter how good the produce department is in your favorite store, vegetables start to die the minute they are picked. Your gardening efforts can offer the freshest vegetables possible as you pick them clean them and eat them.

Growing you own tomatoes and peppers and turning them into spaghetti sauce can be a lot of work, but the end product is your own and nothing can beat the taste of homemade tomato sauce when it is done right. Your gardening work can produce a winter's worth of food during a typical growing season in an average size garden.

There is no doubt that gardening is a lot of work as it starts in the early spring when the soil needs prepared and loosened to allow the roots room to grow once the seeds sprout. Throughout the season you will be watering and weeding and watching everything grow to maturity and then you get to pick it and pack it or eat, right from the vine.