Could Gardening Help You Live Better?

 Studies show that gardening, whether done for a short time or over the long term, can have many benefits. 

It can help lower depression, anxiety, and stress, boost your mood, keep your weight in check, improve your quality of life, build a sense of community, and even sharpen your mind.

Gardeners often talk about how good they feel after spending time outdoors with their plants. Beyond the physical benefits of light exercise like lifting, bending, and stretching, working with soil seems to bring a sense of calm and happiness.

 That’s certainly been true for me and others I know. While this was once just personal observation, science now confirms these positive effects.

A team of scientists from Japan and the U.K. reviewed multiple studies to investigate whether the health benefits gardeners talk about are real.

 Their research, published in a paper titled Gardening is beneficial for health: A meta-analysis, confirmed that gardening offers a wide range of positive effects.

The study looked at 22 research papers from countries like Iran, the U.S., the U.K., Norway, Japan, China, South Korea, and the Netherlands. These papers included different types of gardening, like gardening for therapy, everyday gardening, and short gardening experiments. 

The people in the studies were between the ages of 8 and 84, and the research focused on facts and numbers, not personal opinions.

The study shows that gardening can be good for both physical and mental health. Even spending just a few hours gardening can immediately help reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety. However, it’s unclear how long these benefits last after gardening.

Twelve studies looked at gardening therapy over several weeks or months. One study found that patients' depression, life satisfaction, and thinking abilities continued to improve even three months after therapy, showing that gardening can have long-lasting effects on health.

Seven studies focused on daily gardening and found that people who gardened regularly had better health than those who didn’t. Gardeners experienced less stress, a lower BMI, and higher overall health and life satisfaction.

There was no major difference in the background or income levels of gardeners compared to non-gardeners.

Overall, gardening regularly, even for short periods, has a lasting and growing impact on health.