Working in the garden is not just a relaxing hobby – as pastimes go, it’s one that offers distinct health benefits in addition to the obvious advantage of growing nutritious fruit and vegetables to eat.
It can be relaxing while giving you a low-impact physical workout. As you bend or squat or plant seeds and pull weeds, you’re working most of your major muscle groups in your arms, shoulders, back, legs and abdomen. This gentle working and stretching improves joint flexibility and muscle strength, as well as burning off calories.
We live in a fast-paced, buzzing world and moments where we’re able to stop and relax are often few and far between. Gardening offers a fantastic break from the pressures of everyday life, allowing time to think things over and clear your mind. A Dutch study concluded that people who spent half an hour gardening after a stressful task not only reported feeling in a better mood than another group who spent time reading indoors, but also had measurably lower levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.
Gardening also exercises your creativity. Designing and maintaining a garden is a constant process of planning which plants to put where, and this involves flexing your imagination – all gardeners need to visualise how their garden will look in seasons to come. You also need logic to decide what flowers go together and which do not, which need sun or shade, which need protection from the wind or staking, and so on. As with any mental activity that involves creative thinking and reasoning, this brings real brain benefits in later life.
Getting to grips with your garden can benefit spiritual wellness, too. As modern humans, we spend a great deal of time cut off from nature in our homes and places of work, walking paved streets and driving through busy cities. It may sound clichéd, but gardening really does give us an opportunity to reconnect with nature, with a reminder that we are just one part of the diverse ecosystem that makes up the planet.
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