Gardening gets to the "root" of fitness while you beautify your garden. Once you try digging, weeding and raking, you'll realize not all exercise involves motors and machines. Learn even more about gardening at iVillage's very own garden channel.

Classified as "exercise lite" by fitness experts, gardening can make a serious contribution to your overall activity level, but you shouldn't abandon your workouts. Cultivating the earth is a wonderful way to commune with nature -- and if you grow something healthy, so much the better!

The extent that garden promotes physical fitness depends greatly on the activities involved. Watering a flower bed or pulling a few weeds will obviously burn less energy and tax fewer muscles than raking an acre or building a rock garden. Yet the health benefits of gardening go beyond physical health to spiritual and emotional health.

• This is a fun way to burn calories while doing something useful instead of just trudging on a treadmill or repeating calisthenics.
  
  
• Gardening is also good for reducing stress.
  
  
• Gardening is one of the easiest ways for people to maintain contact with nature - you don't have to leave your yard to enjoy the outdoors.
  
  
• Growing your own vegetables and herbs makes gardening a unique activity that combines the two fundamentals of weight control: diet and fitness.
  
  
• It's good for the environment. You can minimize the use of chemicals or go organic if you want. Eating home-grown food also reduces transportation costs and pollution.

• Although gardening is a wonderful activity, you still should strive for at least three workouts a week to reap maximum health benefits.
  
  
• If you have limited real estate to work with, it's kind of tough to participate, but container gardening is better than none.
  
  
• There's more skill, equipment and knowledge required to do it right than you might think.
  
  
• All that bending and straightening may be tough on your joints, especially your back and knees.
  
  
• Some weekend warriors throw themselves into a big gardening or landscaping project after a long period of inactivity, then wonder why they're sore the next day .