A guest post by Brad Krause, highlighting the many ways Gardening impacts health both in terms of physical health and mental health.
Gardening can be very appealing and soothing, especially for those who love nature. Besides giving your yard a beautiful sight, the view of growing plants and flowers adds a significant value to your mental wellness.
But how does gardening contribute to your wellbeing? Gardening Love is going to show you how powerful ecotherapy is.
Here are some of the ways that gardening impacts health.
Creates happiness
Spending time in the garden and near calm waters is likely to give your mind relaxation. The relaxation increases self-esteem, reduces anger, and improves your mood, especially if you are doing your gardening. Plants have a stimuli effect that lifts your spirit and changes your general perspective on life. People with plants around them are likely to feel alive and active.
Decreased depression
Involving yourself in outdoor gardening and plant care exposes you to sunshine, a source of vitamin D. Vitamin D encourages the production of serotonin. This chemical stabilizes your mood, feeling of wellbeing, and happiness.
Reduced stress
When you engage in gardening, your brain is distracted by nature, reducing the cortisol level, a hormone produced in response to stress. This helps to restore a peaceful and relaxed mind.
Hospitals are adding gardens in their facilities to help patients recover faster.
Boosts potential
Engaging in gardening activities improves your focus and concentration. It improves your mood, focusing your attention on the immediate tasks.
Keeping yourself busy gardening keeps your brain disrupted from negative thoughts and feelings.
Gardening impacts health by building self-esteem
The feeling of being able to plant your crops, take good care of them, and see them grow builds your confidence and makes you feel you can do any task presented to you and bring positive results.
Additionally, it also boosts the confidence you have in your home. A beautiful home increases its appraisal value. Ensure that you take photos of your garden whenever you can. They might be valuable when you want to sell your home. The before and after pictures will quantify your home’s increased value when you want to sell.
Good for the heart
All the activities in the garden, digging, weeding, cultivating, and harvesting, are a form of physical exercise that burns calories and makes your heart stronger, preventing diseases.
Good for the family
You might want to include your family to share with you the feeling of stress relief and happiness involved with gardening. This will boost the family bonding as you share the moment of joy.
Early exposure to dirt in the kid is also associated with some health benefits. It reduces allergy and asthma in kids and also boosts their immune systems.
Boost Vitamin D
Outdoor gardening and exposure to sunshine increase the level of vitamin D in your body. Vitamin D is responsible for strong bones, helps control infections, and reduces inflammation.
Make you healthier
Consuming food from your garden makes you healthier since no chemical is used when planting your crops. Additionally, organic food straight from the garden has more nutritional value than food that has spent weeks in the freezer at a grocery store.
Maintain a healthy weight
Activities like digging, planting, watering, and cultivation are equivalent to waking up every morning and going on a run. Muscular movements help burn calories in your body, preventing you from gaining unnecessary weight and chronic diseases.
Social benefits
Gardening helps to fight loneliness and isolation. Engaging the elderly in community gardening enables them to socialize, brings happiness, and helps them fight various diseases by exposure to the sun and reducing stress levels.
Therapy for recovery from addiction
Patients are put through gardening in rehab facilities to help them in recovery. It enables them to help cope with the world and its challenges. The ability to learn and grow as an individual who no longer depends on drugs brings relief to the patients and boosts their recovery.
Decreased risks of dementia
Engaging in physical activities helps the brain reduce the production of gray matter, a hormone responsible for memory and cognition. Less production of gray matter means high stimulation of memory and senses.
Improved attention span
Those involved in gardening are likely to concentrate fully on one activity without getting distracted. If you have a problem focusing on a conversation or any other action, it is advisable to practice gardening as it will help improve your concentration. It is advisable to add indoor plants to your office to boost productivity.
Improved relationship and compassion
People who spend time around plants are likely to develop good relationships and compassion. This is a result of the happiness generated from staying near plants.
Medicinal properties
Plants and trees have a variety of medicinal values. Plants such as aloe vera are known for their antibacterial and anti-viral properties. Roots of trees are also extracted to make some medicine and herbs, for instance, ginger, turmeric, valerian, and many others.
Nutritional benefits
Fruits and vegetables have high nutritional values and help the body fight diseases. Having them in your garden will enable you to feed them adequately hence more nutritional benefits.
Therapeutic effects
For people who have undergone trauma, gardening is an effective therapy. Nurturing a plant to grow is a way of signaling your brain that you can overcome anything.
Tips Of Creating Your Own Garden for Mental Health
Here are ways you can include gardening in your life for your well being
- Involve in community gardening
Gather as much experience from the community garden. You can learn the best crops to grow and in what season, which crops can do well in your soil type.
- Decide on what to grow
Considering the amount of space you have, you can decide what plants can do well in that space, whether you want to grow fruits or vegetables.
- Grow plants indoor
If you don’t have a garden or enough space, you might want to consider growing your plants indoors in pots or beside the windows. Make sure your plants have enough access to sunlight and good soil.
- Take care of your plants
Plants need a lot of water to grow, ensure you water your plants daily, remove the weeds, and protect them from pest attacks. Give your plants good aeration to promote fast growth.
Conclusion
Gardening impacts health and contributes significantly to shaping your life’s mental and physical wellness. Having a garden around your home brings you a cooling and relaxing mood and lifts your spirit. Even if you don’t have a garden, you can still enjoy the beauty of seeing plants grow by growing your plants indoors. Start your garden now and calm your soul.
Guest post for Gardening Love written by Brad Krause. Brad Krause created selfcaring.info after years spent putting his own self-care on the back burner. His goal now is to educate people on the importance of self-care by providing tips and tricks that are easy to implement.
