Gardening for Better Holistic Health
With the spring season in full swing, your garden is beckoning for you to spend more time in it, as you should!
After a season mostly spent indoors, now’s the perfect time to ditch the cabin fever – and enjoy all the holistic health benefits that your spring garden has to offer.
It’s not only your garden that stands to benefit, but your physical health and mental health, too.
So, what are some practical, easy ways to get the most of your time in the garden, for a better home sanctuary, local ecosystem, and your personal wellbeing? Here are 4 habits to start including in your spring gardening routine for better holistic health.
1. Start small and reap the mental health benefits
Who has ever left their garden feeling more stressed and frazzled than when they entered it? No one. It’s probably why so many people choose gardening as a hobby, thanks to its range of mental health benefits.
Simply observing nature has proven calming effects, a natural mood boost, but interacting with it through gardening activities can have an even better effect on mental health.
For example, deciding on a gardening project, designing and planning it out and seeing it through can test your cognitive function, and improve your self-esteem. If you’ve started a vegetable garden, for example, you’ll know the joy and rewarding feeling of harvesting your first crop.
Besides this, there is also research that shows that a bacterium often found in dirt and soil, Mycobacterium vaccae, stimulates brain cells to produce more serotonin, a key hormone necessary in stabilising your mood and increasing your sense of happiness and wellbeing. Who knew?
There are also, of course, the mental health benefits linked to physical activity, and almost anyone can enjoy these.