Here’s the Dirt on Why Gardening Is Healthy for You

By Judy Kirkwood

You know gardening burns calories – an average of 300 calories per hour. Plus gardening promotes strength, endurance, and flexibility, depending on the task (raking, weeding, planting). The American Horticultural Therapy Association credits gardening with helping to retrain and develop muscles that improve coordination and balance. Research shows that just looking at a green scene lowers blood pressure and reduces stress (by reducing the hormone cortisol).

Here's what we love about gardening. . .

To comment click here.

Gardening is natural. Humans have long gardened and farmed to produce food for survival. But Edward O. Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard naturalist, noted that we are designed to prefer to look at flowers and grass rather than concrete or steel. He refers to biophilia – the instinctive bond between humans and nature as evidenced by our impulse to imitate nature by planting flowers and landscaping, which are beyond gardening for survival.

Gardening is healing. Studies show that even just looking at scenes of nature can significantly cut recovery time after surgery, decrease the need for pain medications, reduce blood pressure, and reduce stress (as evidenced by changes in brain electrical activity, muscle tension, respiration, and shift in emotional states). Hearthstone Alzheimer Care, which manages living-treatment residences for people with Alzheimer’s disease, notes that when their patients are exposed to gardens, anxiety, agitation, aggression, and social withdrawal are decreased tremendously, thus reducing the need for antipsychotic drugs.

Gardening promotes mindfulness. Communing with nature puts the mind in a state similar to meditation, according to Clare Cooper Marcus, Professor emerita from the University of California at Berkeley and one of the founders of the field of environmental psychology. Buddhists often use the lotus flower as a symbol of meditation. “When you are looking intensely at something, or you bend down to smell something, you bypass the [analytical] function of the mind,” points out Marcus. You are in the present moment. Gardening offers the opportunity to be one with nature and to flow into the stream of all life.

Gardening “grounds” us. Digging in the dirt, weeding, planting, watering, pruning, are all part of maintaining the life cycle of plants. A garden is a microcosm of birth, growth, and death. Sometimes plants spread; often they wilt, rot, and die. No matter. Life goes on. We turn the dirt over and plant again. In addition, gardening allows us to unplug from our information overload and work at something our ancestors have done for centuries. It connects us on many planes.

Gardening heightens our senses. A garden is a feast for the senses. Visually, the power of flowers is apparent. We smile at the riot of color in a plot or within one flower. Who can resist a pansy face? Children immediately touch and pluck the silky blooms. The wind moving through grass and leaves produces a comforting rustle. Honeysuckle is nature’s perfume. And there are plenty of flowers, not to mention fruits and vegetables, that can be eaten.

Gardening is creative. Each garden is an opportunity to paint a picture in the same way an artist chooses colors, proportion, and shape for a landscape piece. Choosing the place to plant, as well as what to plant brings in all the senses as well as challenges the brain with necessities of sun exposure and access to water.

To comment click here.