With the spring sunshine finally here, find out why you might want to park the bike in the garage, hang up your walking boots and get active a little closer to home, like your back garden.

Even if you’ve never grown a carrot in your life, there are loads of projects you can try if you have a bit of outdoor space, which will have you working off that lunch in no time.

If you’ve caught the ‘grow your own’ bug, then just potting up a packet of seeds will burn a respectable 230 calories an hour, whilst hacking back some unruly shrubs to make way for your new plot will boost that to 280 an hour. If you’re digging out some potatoes for dinner then you’ll be using 350 an hour, and if you’re getting the bonfire going to keep you warm as you work, that will burning a mighty 1000 calories an hour! Time for a roast anyone?

If you don’t have any outdoor space, then why not join the ‘growing’ army (pardon the pun) of people applying for an allotment to call your own. Be warned, there are around 100,000 people in England already in the queue, but you could also look at Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s scheme, LandShare which matches growers with landowners who have plots to rent.

If you’re in it more for the fitness rather than the food factor, then why not join a Green Gym? Run by the BTCV, you’ll be getting stuck into a couple of hours of conservation or gardening work with a group of volunteers, and it’s completely free. As well as saving you money, it can also improve your wellbeing with participants reporting feeling less stressed, having increased energy and improved self esteem.

So what are you waiting for? The growing season has started and those raised beds won’t weed themselves…
photo credit: strife

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1. £3.2 million boost for communities and their green spaces