Reap the Health Benefits of Gardening

The health benefits of gardening extend well beyond growing and eating fresh produce. Being in touch with nature can decrease your susceptibility to everything from depression to heart disease.

For those of us who are fortunate enough to have space for vegetable or flower gardens, the idea that gardening offers health benefits is no surprise. Just the simple task of plunging your hands into moist soil, inhaling fresh air, and watching something grow and mature under the cultivation of your own hands is enough to soothe stress away.

Even the ancient Mesopotamians and Persians knew this. They designed and cultivated the first healing gardens in recorded history. In the early 1800s, medical practitioners began to praise the benefits of gardening for treating psychological illnesses, and Benjamin Rush, MD, wrote about gardening’s healing benefits in his 1812 book Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind.

Today, horticultural therapy, as it’s known in the medical world, has been proven in formal studies to alleviate depression, decrease anxiety, increase self-esteem, slow heart rates, improve immune system response, and enhance overall physical health. Gardening programs have even demonstrated their ability to decrease recidivism rates among criminals.

Having heart disease or clinical depression aren’t prerequisites to benefiting from gardening. “Exposure to nature and natural settings is good for people,” says Leah Diehl, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Therapeutic Horticulture. “It’s been proven to reduce stress and high blood pressure.”

Jean Larson, MA, a horticultural therapist at the University of Minnesota, says that because gardening engages so many senses and muscle groups, its power to address a variety of illnesses and promote overall good health is endless. “Thirty minutes of moderate exercise each day reduces risks of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and colon cancer,” she says. And gardening is an easy and fun way to get that exercise. “It’s not something you have to go to the gym for,” Larson adds. “You can go right out your back door.”

And for busy people balancing work and family, gardening might be the antidote to stress, anxiety, or depression. “Being in touch with nature is calming,” Diehl says. “It’s similar to being a parent because you’re nurturing something else and realizing you’re part of something bigger. Horticultural activities can put you in touch with your self-worth.”

You don’t have to have a big backyard—or a yard at all—to practice gardening. There are a lot of flowers, vegetables, and herbs that do well in containers on an apartment balcony or a windowsill. And you can also join a community garden or volunteer to help at a public garden.

“That basic instinct of humans to be in nature is so important,” says Diehl. “Many people have lost that connection and don’t even know the names of plants anymore. When we’re reconnected to nature, we feel a sense of peace.”

To find a community garden near your city, visit the American Community Gardening Association online at www.communitygarden.org.

— Deborah R. Huso