Exercise & Fitness
Gardening and yard work: Exercise with a purpose
Mowing, raking, digging, and doing other garden chores can be a productive way to meet your physical activity goals.
- Reviewed by Christopher P. Cannon, MD, Editor in Chief, Harvard Heart Letter; Editorial Advisory Board Member, Harvard Health Publishing
After an afternoon of raking leaves from your lawn or pulling weeds from your garden, you may wonder how much all that activity counts toward your daily exercise quota. The answer? More than you might think.
"Many yard and gardening tasks require enough effort to count as moderate-intensity exercise," says Dr. I-Min Lee, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an expert on the role of physical activity in preventing disease. For example, raking and many other garden chores require at least 3 metabolic equivalents (METs) — a standard measure that exercise researchers use to gauge exertion (see "Lawn and garden care: How much effort?").
The U.S. physical activity guidelines call for doing at least 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise. You can meet that goal doing garden or yard chores — whether you do it all in just two days on the week-end or spread it throughout the week.
Lawn and garden care: How much effort?A metabolic equivalent (MET) is a measure used by exercise researchers based on how much oxygen per minute the average person uses during a particular activity. One MET is the amount of energy you expend when you're sitting quietly. Activities rated at 2 METs use twice as much oxygen as sitting, 3 METs means three times as much oxygen, and so on. Activities that use 3 to 5.9 METs count as moderate-intensity exercise. Many common garden chores fall into this category. |
|
|
ACTIVITY |
METs |
|
Walking and standing while picking flowers or vegetables |
3.0 |
|
Digging, spading, filling garden, composting (light-to-moderate effort) |
3.5 |
|
Raking lawn or leaves (moderate effort) |
4.0 |
|
Planting seedlings, crops, shrubs, including stooping (moderate effort) |
4.3 |
|
Pushing a wheelbarrow or large garden cart |
4.8 |
|
Mowing lawn, walking with a power mower (moderate-to-vigorous effort) |
5.0 |
|
Weeding, cultivating garden, hoeing (moderate-to-vigorous effort) |
5.0 |
|
Mowing lawn with a push or hand mower (vigorous effort) |
6.0 |
Stronger and safer?
You may glean a few added health benefits from these outdoor endeavors. Several yard and garden chores — digging holes, shoveling soil and spreading compost, or bagging lawn clippings or leaves, for example — strengthen various muscles, including those in the legs, arms, and core. As Dr. Lee points out, the exercise guidelines also recommend muscle-strengthening exercises two days a week. Another benefit: As is also true for activities like walking, swimming, and dancing, gardening or yard work has a low rate of injuries when compared with higher-intensity, vigorous activities such as running.
Reap what you sow
There's even evidence to support body-wide benefits from gardening, according to a 2023 study in The Lancet Planetary Health. Researchers enrolled nearly 300 adults who hadn't gardened previously. They assigned half to a community gardening group, and asked the others to wait a year to start gardening. All wore activity monitors and took periodic surveys gauging their nutrition habits and mental health.
People in the gardening group increased their physical activity levels by about 42 minutes per week. They also ate about 7% more fiber per day — possibly because they ate what they grew — compared with those who didn't garden. Plus, the gardeners reported greater reductions in stress and anxiety. All of those changes help lower the risk of heart disease. Other evidence points to improvements in physical and mental health from gardening, even if you grow flowers or other landscape plants instead of produce.
If you enjoy gardening and yard work, it can be a good way to meet your exercise goals and bolster your cardiovascular health, says Dr. Lee. "After all, the best regimen is doing activities that you enjoy, since you are more likely to consistently engage in them," she says.
Image: © Don Mason/Getty Images
About the Author
Julie Corliss, Executive Editor, Harvard Heart Letter
About the Reviewer
Christopher P. Cannon, MD, Editor in Chief, Harvard Heart Letter; Editorial Advisory Board Member, Harvard Health Publishing
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