How Gardening Affects Mental Health (2024)

FAQs

How does gardening impact mental health? ›

Gardening can make you feel more peaceful and content. Focusing your attention on the immediate tasks and details of gardening can reduce negative thoughts and feelings and can make you feel better in the moment. Just spending time around plants eases stress for many people.

Results of another study showed that gardening increased life satisfaction, vigor, psychological wellbeing, and cognitive function. Further research on gardening found it improved life satisfaction and mood.

Gardens are important spaces for everyone, young or old. It can even become a potential treatment for children with ADHD, a place where they can relax, play or just chill.

Gardening can improve cognitive function as well because it helps to keep the mind active and engaged. This peaceful activity can also provide a therapeutic outlet for those who have Alzheimer's disease.

Plants can help boost our mood, Hall said. Hall said nature and being around house plants can help lower cortisol, the stress hormone. He has also published articles reviewing the benefits of plants, including enhanced memory retention, reduced effects of dementia and greater life satisfaction.

Building Character by Tending to a Garden

By tending to a garden with your child, you are not only helping them bring valuable science concepts to life but also teaching them responsibility, growing their confidence and giving them opportunities to practice patience and overcome setbacks.

Gardening instills a sense of hope in people by connecting them with nature, fostering a sense of accomplishment, and occasionally feeding them an endorphin or dopamine rush. It can become addictive.

Scientific data shows a direct connection between longevity and gardening, a hobby that benefits the body as well as the mind.

It's been shown to lighten mood and lower levels of stress and anxiety. It's very gratifying to plant, tend, harvest and share your own food. Routines provide structure to our day and are linked to improved mental health. Gardening routines, like watering and weeding, can create a soothing rhythm to ease stress.

Getting your hands dirty in the garden can increase your serotonin levels – contact with soil and a specific soil bacteria, Mycobacterium vaccae, triggers the release of serotonin in our brain according to research. Serotonin is a happy chemical, a natural anti-depressant and strengthens the immune system.

Is gardening very therapeutic? ›

Working together, tending gardens and growing food, in particular, yield remarkable benefits. These include improvements in self-esteem, teamwork, social interaction, planning, problem solving and coping skills, as well as a passion for gardening and community that may continue throughout life.

Similarly, another study showed that after 30 minutes of gardening, participants' cortisol levels dropped and their moods were boosted by the activity. The takeaway? Spending just half an hour with your hands in the soil, surrounded by vegetation, can provide serious benefits for your body, mind and overall health.

According to research, getting your hands in the soil and contact with a specific soil bacteria called Mycobacterium Vaccae triggers the release of serotonin in our brain. Serotonin is a natural anti-depressant and also strengthens the immune system. It is the Lack of serotonin in the brain causes depression.

Gardening is similar to other moderate to strenuous forms of exercise like walking and bicycling. Gardening works all the major muscle groups: legs, buttocks, arms, shoulders, neck, back and abdomen. Tasks that use these muscles build strength and burn calories.

Gardening is a great hands-on experience with nature. Working with the soil, smelling the plants and dirt, feeling the different textures, and seeing all the green foliage and flowers can help relax the mind and ground yourself. When you ground yourself, you reduce stress, anxiety, and even built-up anger.

Boosts Mood and Sense of Reward

Watching all the beautiful plants in one's garden grow and thrive can have a huge impact on seniors' emotional well-being. Gardening provides a sense of purpose, as seniors take responsibility for nurturing and caring for their plants.

Sensorial lessons are found throughout the garden; preschoolers can practice color recognition, identify fragrances, and learn how fresh food tastes. Emotionally, gardening reduces stress while cognitively it improves attention and memory.

The stimulation of the senses by the fragrances, visual beauty, and physical touch inherent in gardening are powerful antidotes to the negative sensations that re-terrify and fuel avoidance of life after trauma.

Gardening also increases the production of brain derived neurotrophic factors, or BDNF's. This is essentially fertilizer for the brain, and helps grow new neural cells as well as maintaining the neural pathways you already have.