The World Environment Day is Celebrated on June 5th every year. The year 2020 began with environmental crisis revealing itself in a disturbing manner- cyclones & floods, locust attack, Australian bushfire, corona virus pandemic -all these calamities act as a reminder that human health is directly linked with our Planet’s health. World Environment Day is a reminder that we need to now fundamentally rethink our relationship with the living world, with natural ecosystems and their biodiversity. One small pledge we can take on World Environment Day is to take up the hobby of Gardening to plant a sapling in our backyard, patio, garden, neighbourhood and contribute towards a greener and pollution free world and reap surprising health benefits of gardening.
Planting a beautiful garden can be a great way to relieve your stress in addition to contributing to the Noble cause of protecting our mother nature. Whether you have a small patio, or a full-fledged garden, turning your courtyard of nature into a beautiful garden is a stress buster in itself. A well laid out, aesthetically pleasing garden is your daily dose of nirvana. Gardening is just not a hobby, it is taking care of nature and surroundings and taking care of yourselves first. Mental Healing is one of the greatest Mental health benefit of gardening apart from reliving stress and making you happy.
9 Health Benefits of Gardening:
1. Gardening is good for Physical health
Spending time outside is good for your bones. When you’re outdoors and your skin is exposed to the sun, it prompts your body to make Vitamin D. Not only this the influx of fresh air is good for your health. Also, while enjoying yourself in the garden, you are also working all the major muscle groups like legs, arms, shoulders, back etc. Gardening helps your build muscles and burn calories. Health benefits of gardening extends to encompass wellbeing of your physical health as well.
2. Gardening is therapeutic & makes you happier
Gardening is not only beneficial for your physical health but also for your mental wellbeing. Daily stressors like EMIs, work, commute, keep our subconscious minds hyper-active. Gardening helps us to break this monotony and while making us concentrate with the task in hand like repotting, weeding, watering. It imparts happiness when we see our garden grow and turn more green and beautiful. It gives our mind the must needed break we daily need. Also, it helps fight loneliness specially in elderlies who after retirement struggle with fewer socialisation opportunities. They can productively engage in taking care of their garden. The act of growing plants may also help in boosting your mood and changes your outlook.
“The thing about gardening is that you have to have faith in the future, growing something green, something real, something alive, is a hopeful thing to do.”
3. Gardening teaches us responsibility
Our Garden is full of life. Garden is just not about plants, but it about the entire mini ecosystem that coexist with it- like birds, squirrels, honey bees, and other living organism which thrive on it. Having a living thing to care for gives us a sense of responsibility – if we do not prune, water or otherwise care for the plants, it may die displacing the animals and birds too. Gardening is therefore a big responsibility as it teaches us to take care of life dependent on us, give us a purpose and a sense of worth.
4. Gardening gives us Self satisfaction
Gardening and landscaping can truly be a source of self-satisfaction.. Planning, planting and watching your own garden grow can fill a person with satisfaction and pride.
5. Gardening increases your acceptance (of things not in your control )
The feeling of not having a control over things in life is the major source of frustration and suffering as people are by default control freak. The more we have an acceptance of our limits to control things in life, the better peace we are at. Gardening teaches us to accept mother nature as the one in Control. But accepting that mother nature doesn’t mean giving up. While gardening we bring out best efforts to what we can control and leave the rest to the mighty nature to take the ultimate call and take it from there. Ultimately, your garden, just like your own life, is in bigger hands than yours. Accepting this increases your zone of acceptance of things in general.
6. Gardening makes us constructive
Gardening teaches us to bring life and beauty around us. It gives us a growth mindset as opposed to fixed mindset. With growth mindset we are continuously learning while making gardening mistakes. As more mistakes tantamount to more learning and more growing as opposed to fixed mindset. When something doesn’t work out the way we had hoped, we view it as a learning opportunity rather than as a “failure.” It restores your confidence to take care of your things.
7. Gardening Connects us to Nature & Grow our own food
In highly urbanised and technologically driven world, reconnecting with nature has a huge impact on mental health. “Forest Bathing” or simply immersing in the green or spending time in greenery helps us destress, relax and impart calmness. Also, gardening helps us to grow our own food as well. We can have small kitchen garden which my provide us with fresh organic produce like wheat grass, mint, etc. Growing your own food can help you eat healthier. All the reasons to have your own vegetable garden.
8. Gardening impacts the Environment
We daily hear about negative impacts humans cause on environment, but by gardening we all can do our bit and bring some benefit to earth. Plants are highly effective air cleaners, air fresheners, and so on. If everyone plants some trees and small plants in their locality and garden and takes care of it, earth will thank you. Feeling of contributing to such a noble cause can itself be a stress reliever.
9. Gardening Helps us connect with Other
Positive and meaningful social relationships boosts our mood and gardening offers opportunities to connect with others who are like minded and have common interest in gardening. It also is one of the best ways to bring family together while kids might love playing in water while watering plants and adults mowing the lawn. Also we have community gardens where we can make connections. We can also connect with people online and share our common experiences and common love for gardening.
Gardening is indeed good overall mental health and wellbeing. It relives stress and uplifts your mood. So step out and pull up some weed, prune unruly shrubs, water plants, sow seedlings, and see your garden transform into beautiful world full of life and take pride in your garden and reap surprising health benefits of gardening.
“People need respite and nature provides respite”
If you love to do gardening, please share your thoughts on why gardening is good for you and what are the potent benefits of gardening which you think are worth mentioning? Happy gardening!
INSIDER TIP: It’s True—You Really Should Talk to Your Plant
In a study conducted by the Royal Horticultural Society, it was discovered that talking to your plants really can help them grow faster. It was also found that plants grow faster to the sound of a female voice than to the sound of a male voice. Talking to your Plants helps! If your plant is dying, talking to it will help them become more healthy, and grow faster.
FACT: Plants can communicate with other plants using wireless pathways above and underground as per new research. Plants can communicate across species through Fungi and soil.
