Gardening for Mental Health and Wellness

A partnership post by Hello Doctor PH

Aside from exercising regularly and eating healthy, there are a number of activities that can improve your overall health. One that’s becoming increasingly popular is home gardening for health and wellbeing.

Other than beautifying your backyard, gardening also plays an important role in keeping your mind and body in good shape. A lot of people have turned to gardening health and wellbeing during the COVID-19 to help ease their stress and worries.

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Coping with stress through gardening
Since the pandemic began, staying home has been one of the best ways to control the spread of the virus. But being in home isolation for months can cause stress, frustration, and loneliness.

To cope, a lot of people have found gardening as one of the best ways to spend their time, and refocus their energies.

Aside from planting succulents and other aesthetically pleasing plants indoors, cultivating herbs and veggies in urban homes has also gained popularity during community quarantine. This is because more people have become aware of the importance of saving and becoming more self-sufficient.

In the Philippines, urban gardening has become a popular way to create alternative sources of ingredients. And so a lot of people, even in cities, have geared towards planting fruits and vegetables in their backyards, balconies, and patios.

With this, the Department of Agriculture has been actively promoting the Plant, Plant, Plant program, which encourages Filipinos to grow their own food and lessen their worries about food supply shortages during the pandemic.

The benefits of gardening for health and wellbeing.
People use gardening for health and wellbeing during these trying times, since it helps preserve their mental health. Aside from its positive effects on stress management, gardening can do more for our health. Here’s how.

Gardening serves as your daily dose of movement.
As a form of exercise, gardening encourages you to move around, use your muscles, and stretch your body by digging, walking, bending, mowing, and raking.

Even if you’re stuck at home, you can continue being active through gardening. In this way, gardening can also help reduce the risk of obesity.

Gardening improves and preserves your mental health.
Other than its physical benefits, gardening also enhances and maintains a person’s mental health. Seeing greenery makes you more calm and relaxed, thus reducing stress, anxiety and depression.

Gardening also signals your body to release more happy hormones like dopamine and serotonin, which make you feel positive emotions and alleviate discomfort and loneliness.

Gardening promotes healthy eating habits
Since you grow your food in your backyard, it is much easier for you to access healthier food choices that you can include in your diet. There is also the added benefit of knowing where your food comes from and the freshness of what you eat.

Gardening helps people dealing with Alzheimer’s and dementia
According to studies, gardening helps alleviate the symptoms of Alzheimer’s and dementia, such as agitation and mood changes.
Other studies have found that gardening lowers the risk of dementia by 36%.

Other benefits
According to a study about gardening for health and wellbeing, gardening also:

• Helps people who are recovering from surgeries and other medical treatments.
• Improves social interaction.
• Reduces the occurrence of self-harm in those who are dealing with mental health problems.
• Improves different mental skills such as memory, alertness, and cognition.
• Helps people overcome their difficulties with drug and alcohol dependency.​

Tips for gardening
If you are a beginner in gardening, these tips can make your quarantine gardening successful:

• Think of what to plant. Do you want flowers? A tree? Or fresh produce like vegetables and fruits? Some of the easiest plants to grow are snake plants, spider plants, tomatoes, lettuce, basil, and thyme.
• Make sure to stay consistent with your gardening schedule. Allot a specific time in your day for gardening.
• Start with a small area. Eventually expanding your garden will be more useful as you explore growing more varieties of plants.
• Do your research. Gardening takes preparation and research, such as what type of soil to use and what plants or seeds thrive in different kinds of soil.
• Different plants have different needs. Make sure to learn the right way of watering your plants and how much water they need, as well as the amount of sunlight they need to thrive.

You might find gardening challenging at first, but with patience and learning, you will soon master the craft.

Key takeaways
Gardening is an enjoyable activity not just for adults and the elderly, but also for the younger generation. Gardening can be an activity that families can do together to bond and for parents to teach their kids about the value of responsibility. During the pandemic, gardening can help you with your daily struggles, as it helps ease your worries about the current state of the world.

Gardening teaches people lots of things, such as patience and cultivating  a sense of responsibility, both of which are valuable traits in order to live a healthy and happier life.

Hello Health Group does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment

SOURCES
The Benefits of Gardening and Food Growing for Health and Well-Being  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263117318_The_benefits_of_gardening_and_food_growing_for_health_and_wellbeing Accessed September 27, 2020

The Health and Well-Being Benefits of Gardening https://www.abbeyfield.com/blog/the-health-and-well-being-benefits-of-gardening/ Accessed September 27, 2020

Gardening During Lockdown https://www.publichealth.hscni.net/node/5227 Accessed September 27, 2020
Grow Your Own Food: The Rise of Urban Gardening During Community Quarantine https://ati.da.gov.ph/ati-3/features/6152020/grow-your-own-food-rise-urban-gardening-during-community-quarantine Accessed September 27, 2020

Lifestyle Factors and Risk of Dementia: Dubbo Study of the Elderly https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16411871/ Accessed September 27, 2020
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Gardening 101: Starting a Home Garden  https://www.agriculture.com.ph/2019/07/15/gardening-101-starting-a-home-garden/ Accessed September 27, 2020

About Author
Hello Health is a leading Digital Health company in Asia focusing on the development of healthcare information platforms in local languages for Consumers and Patients, and is the clear leader in Health & Wellness content and search.

The Group’s mission is to lead Asia in the democratization of healthcare knowledge and to be leaders in the creation and distribution of health & wellness content, in collaboration with a network of local and international healthcare professionals, that empowers millions of people to make more informed decisions and to live healthier and happier lives.

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