May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a reminder to take a moment to reflect on our mental health. Taking time for self-care or participating in activities that benefit one’s well-being is a great way to take care of one’s mental health.
Gardening is an activity that is shown to have numerous positive effects on our mental health and well-being. Being outside in nature and taking the time to connect with the Earth allows for a pause and reset in our day that can be extremely beneficial. Here are 14 ways that gardening positively impacts your mental health and well-being:
- Increased exercise outdoors
When you are outside tending to a garden, you are performing functional movements that are a great form of exercise. Bending down, squatting, carrying bags of soil or fertilizer, digging, and raking are examples of physically intense activities you perform while gardening.
- Reducing stress and adding routine
Activities like gardening have been proven to reduce stress, lower anxiety, and lighten mood. Gardening also adds a routine, which can provide structure to our lives and soothe stress.
- Practicing mindfulness
Gardening is an excellent way to practice mindfulness. Being outside, with one’s hands occupied by an activity, helps you focus and distract your mind from things to worry about. It also provides a brief break from using our phones or technology, which can be good to help calm and focus the mind instead of being distracted by what’s happening online in the digital world.
- Provides space for social connection
Gardens provide a place for social connection, whether it’s chatting with neighbors or family while outside, participating in conversations about gardening tips and tricks, or working alongside others in a community garden. Social connection is essential to mental well-being and provides support, improves resilience, and reduces stress.
- Physical health benefits of being outside
When you’re outside, you tend to breathe deeper which brings more oxygen into the blood, clears out your lungs, improves digestion, and increases immune response. It’s been shown that spending time outdoors helps to reduce muscle tension and calm heart rate. Sunlight also improves vitamin D levels and can help to lower blood pressure. Gardening can have mental and physical effects on your well-being!
- Improved diet and nutrition
Gardeners are more likely to consume the produce they grow, adding a variety of nutritious produce to their diet. Different vegetables have a variety of health benefits from boosting your immune system to reducing the risk of heart disease.
Gardening can also have a positive effect on the brain, further impacting mental health and well-being. Clinical studies show a positive correlation between being outdoors and participating in activities like gardening and mental health.
- Anxiety and stress reduction
Time in nature can lower mental fatigue recovery time, improve concentration levels, and reduce psychological distress, depression symptoms, clinical anxiety, and mood disorders.
- Attention deficit recovery
Spending time outside or simply viewing nature helps to calm attention deficit disorders and focus the brain.
- Decreased depression
Gardening and being outdoors is clinically proven to help reduce depression by lowering stress cortisol levels and improving heart rate variability.
- Enhanced memory retention
Spending time outside or simply viewing nature helps to calm attention deficit disorders and focus the brain.
- Mitigation of PTSD
People treated with horticulture therapy showed improvement on PTSD reactions, post-traumatic growth, and positive states of mind.
- Increased creativity, productivity and attention
Taking short walks in green environments has been shown to boost creativity. Being able to see or be outside in nature correlates with increased productivity and attention span.
- Reduced effects of dementia
People who participated in therapy activities like gardening were more actively engaged, had reduced aggressive behavior, and showed improvements in their cognitive capacity.
- Enhanced self-esteem
Participating in outdoor exercise like gardening correlates to improvements in self-esteem and mental health.
Sources:
The positive effects of gardening on mental health – AgriLife Today
Dig into the benefits of gardening – Mayo Clinic Health System
A Review of the Emotional and Mental Health Benefits of Plants
