Your Garden of Wellgreeness: The Health Booster Outside Your Door

Peak gardening time is right now. June is lush and green. The days are warm, sunny and close to the longest we’ll have for the year. The soft evening light and breezes are perfect for long walks or just walking around your yard enjoying the fruits of your labor.

All the back breaking early spring raking, soil amending with smelly manure, weed pulling, seed sprinkling and watering is suddenly worth it. The quarter inch sprouts you’ve nurtured are suddenly a foot tall and you don’t know where the time went. You see the yellow flowers breaking out on your tomato plants. Your peonies are bending over with heavy pink, red, or white blooms. Your roses perfume the air.
Did you know that your love of plants is making you healthier by the day?
Besides the exercise we get through all the bending, walking, and digging, gardening provides many other hidden benefits that are seldom discussed. Researchers from Bristol University and University College London have found that a common soil bacteria makes us happier, acting as a natural anti-depressant. (Paddock, 2007)
Besides making us happier, the soil bacteria, Mycobacterium vaccae, has recently been shown to reduce inflammation as well as reducing stress responses. (Paddock C. , 2019)
Gardening is wonderful for our mental health because it gives us a sense of purpose, gives us something to look forward to, allows us to nurture other living beings, and facilitates mindfulness. (Rayner, 2015)
Japan has caught on to these benefits of spending time outdoors creating the concept in the 1980s to 1990s of shinrin-yoku, meaning “forest bathing” or “absorbing the forest atmosphere.” Forest bathing acts as both a mindfulness tool and exercise. It lowers stress and has even been shown to lower blood pressure. (Aubrey, 2017) You don’t even need an actual forest. Any plant-filled quiet area will do.
Forest bathing is starting to become popular in America as well with churches and groups organizing forest bathing for their members. There is even talk of physicians writing prescriptions for forest bathing to help people lower stress and build resilience. Even health companies like Kaiser Permanente are talking about it. (Kaiser Permanente, 2020)
Next time you find yourself at the local garden center loading your cart up with plants (okay, maybe that’s just me), you can check out knowing that you are investing in more than beautifying your yard, you are investing in your health and well being.

References
Aubrey, A. (2017, July 17). Your Health. Retrieved from NPR: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/07/17/536676954/forest-bathing-a-retreat-to-nature-can-boost-immunity-and-mood
Kaiser Permanente. (2020, May 3). Thrive. Retrieved from Kaiser Permanente: https://thrive.kaiserpermanente.org/thrive-together/live-well/forest-bathing-try
Paddock, C. (2007, April 2). Retrieved from Medical News Today: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/66840#1
Paddock, C. (2019, 5 31). Retrieved from Medical News Today: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325357#Another-side-of-the-hygiene-effect
Rayner, S. (2015, May 13). Retrieved from Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/worry-and-panic/201505/petal-power-why-is-gardening-so-good-our-mental-health