I’ve had my fair experience with stress and anxiety in my life, it’s something I battle with a lot on an almost daily basis. So when I started my allotment plot, I wanted to know, can gardening reduce stress? If so, how and why?
I have two children and so my day to day life can often feel pretty hectic. Between school runs, my allotment plot, my new business and trying to keep healthy there can often feel like there’s not much time left for me.
This lack of time carved out for myself leaves me feeling stressed a lot of the time and creates a feeling of anxiety. Sometimes, I struggle to keep my emotions in check and overreact to the smallest of situations, like the dinner getting burnt or one of the children losing their school shoes. As gardening is my main focus in the day, I often wonder, can gardening reduce stress?
IS GARDENING GOOD FOR MENTAL HEALTH?
From my own personal experience, I would absolutely agree that gardening is in fact great for your mental health. Something about being outdoors in nature, delving your hands into the soil and nurturing plants to life just fills you up and brings a new perspective to life.
But what is the science behind it?
In the soil is a bacteria called Mycobacterium Vaccae. By putting our hands into the soil we make contact with this bacteria, which triggers serotonin in our brains. Serotonin is a natural anti depressant. It also helps to strengthen our immune systems and we all know how good we feel when we are fit and healthy!
CAN GARDENING RELIEVE STRESS?
When I’m out in the garden, I feel a million miles away from everyone and everything. My focus is on the birds, the plants and the jobs at hand. I feel peaceful and calm. I’ve always believed that nature is a healer. That nature can not only reduce stress, but heal the most difficult of wounds. Like grief, or times of extreme difficulty.
I think a lot of you reading this will agree that just being outdoors in a green space can instantly make you feel better. I thought about it a little more and realised that I now make a conscious decision to leave my troubles at the door whenever I go out to the garden or allotment plot. If I’ve had a difficult morning with the kids or I’m not feeling myself, I consciously leave it to one side while I’m gardening.
I’m choosing to make gardening my happy place. It’s almost like I’ve trained my brain to stop feeling stressed the second I step foot into the garden!
HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN MAKE YOU FEEL?
When I walk into my garden, the sights, smells and sounds instantly make me feel calm and at peace. As I dig and plant and support vegetables I lose myself in a form of flow, which in turn makes me feel relaxed and content.
A Japanese study recently stated that viewing plants reduced stress, fear, anger and sadness as well as reducing blood pressure, pulse rate and tension. They found that just by facing a green hedge over a concrete wall was more beneficial psychologically and a massive mood booster.
I think it’s pretty obvious just how gardening can reduce stress. My garden is my sanctuary, my little place I go when I need to relax and reduce my stress levels. It doesn’t even matter if I’m working or busy doing nothing! I’m lucky enough that gardening has become a major part of my life and that I am even managing to forge a career out of it too. This means I am lucky enough to be able to combine my working life with a hobby that I’ve always enjoyed and has always managed to reduce my stress levels.
So yes, I believe that gardening can reduce stress levels and everyone should get involved with it in whatever way they can!
