Gardening for health: a regular dose of gardening

Summary & key facts

This paper looked across many studies and trials and found that being around plants, using gardens, or even seeing pictures of nature is linked with better mood, lower stress and blood pressure, less pain after surgery, and more physical activity. Gardening also mixes exercise, social contact and fresh food, which can help both mental and physical health. The author suggests doctors should encourage patients to use green spaces and asks local leaders to create more parks and trees, but he also notes that some studies are only associations and cannot prove cause.

Key facts:

• Looking at plants or natural scenes has been shown in several experiments to lower stress, reduce blood pressure, and improve mood.
• In some controlled studies, hospital patients who had views of trees or indoor plants used less pain medicine and left hospital sooner than patients without those views.
• Gardening gives moderate exercise, social contact, sunlight, and fresh fruit and vegetables, which together can help strength, fitness, mood, and diet.
• Large surveys link higher amounts of green space with lower levels of depression, anxiety and stress, but these links can be affected by other things like income or housing, so they do not prove cause.
• Therapeutic and communal gardens have been used to help people with mental health problems, prisoners, and people recovering from stroke or injury, and some projects have led to work or training opportunities.
• The author argues that promoting gardening and more green space is a low-cost, widely available way to help public health and could ease pressure on health services, while acknowledging more careful research is still needed.

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that exposure to plants and green space, and particularly to gardening, is beneficial to mental and physical health, and so could reduce the pressure on NHS services. Health professionals should therefore encourage their patients to make use of green space and to work in gardens, and should pressure local authorities to increase open spaces and the number of trees, thus also helping to counteract air pollution and climate change.

Topics

Climate Change and Health Impacts Therapeutic Uses of Natural Elements Urban Green Space and Health

Categories

Environmental Science Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis Physical Sciences

Tags

Engineering Environmental health Linguistics Mechanical engineering Medicine Mental health Philosophy Psychiatry Space (punctuation) Urban green space Work (physics)

Conditions & symptoms

Anxiety Burnout Chronic Pain Depression Anxiety or worry Lack of energy or motivation Sadness or low mood