5 ways gardening can improve our mental health:

To celebrate National Growing for Wellbeing week, we caught up with our very own expert gardener and allotment extraordinaire at Harvard, Amy McRitchie about how gardening can improve mental health.

“To be honest, I accidently fell into gardening. It started out with a spur of the moment, pandemic-driven decision to sign up for an allotment plot in 2020 – which I swiftly forgot I’d done. A year later, I got the call. A rather overgrown, weedy, 150sqm of Essex jungle was available if I wanted it – and I did!

Over the past 18 months. Plot 11R has become my sanctuary. My place to disconnect from the everyday and connect with nature (yes, even the slugs). It gets me outside in the elements, but more importantly - outside my head.

In comms there can be days where you feel like you’ve done *a lot* but not achieved much. But on my allotment, every day I can say “I did that” - whether it’s a day of digging, weeding, lugging watering cans or the best bit: seeing something you’ve carefully tended to end up on your plate.”

Amy McRitchie - Harvard

Gardening can provide many benefits to our mental and physical wellbeing.  Here are a few we’ve dug up:

1. Helps ease stress

Just being around nature can help your mind re-set from the pressures life brings. Whether it’s physically growing something in a garden or an allotment, walking in green spaces or even just listening to soundscapes. (We love this channel!)

2. Gives you a calm focus

Gardening allows you to focus on the task at hand and in turn, can help take your mind of negative feelings. It provides a single task to concentrate on with minimal distractions, which can help improve focus for people with similar symptoms of ADHD.

3. Gets you moving

Gardening gets you moving with physical tasks like weeding and digging which produce endorphins without having to step foot into a gym. This can be beneficial for those who don’t want to focus on weight or body image as the goals of the tasks are not purely focused on changing your body.

4. Creates a sense of achievement

From the winning feeling of a blooming flower or a fruiting plant, to the pleasure of cooking with ingredients you’ve grown yourself – gardening can help create a sense of satisfaction that your efforts have resulted in a physical outcome. It can also give you a feeling of empowerment outside of academic and professional environments.

5. Helps build relationships

Gardening can be social, whether it’s in a public space such as a community garden or allotment, or in a private space with family – gardening can help you build bonds with different people that you may not expect to make.

So what are you waiting for? Get outside and get gardening!