Gardening has never been more important than now. Indulge and nourish your mental and physical well-being with the re-opening of your beloved GCA Garden Centres. In a post-pandemic world, discover the many health benefits of gardening, which reduces stress and depression, offers comfort and joy, connects us with Nature and helps to give us purpose, to name just a few. Let’s take what we can from this lockdown – a time to re-set – and let’s get positively green.

• A regular dose of gardening can improve your health. Studies report a wide range of health outcomes, such as reductions in depression, anxiety, and body mass index, as well as increases in life satisfaction, quality of life, and sense of community.
• Gardening gives people a creative way to change their stress and frustration into something beautiful that offers comfort and joy.
• Reduced depression and anxiety result from ‘active horticulture’ (gardening), and emotional well-being and physical health are enhanced.
• Health benefits associated with exposure to and use of green spaces include long term reductions in heart disease, cancer, musculoskeletal conditions, and also reduced levels of obesity and higher self-rated mental health
• Gardens are important to support recovery from illness.
• Gardening provides relief from ‘problem solving’ mental attention, shifting the mind to restorative, effortless attention.
• Plants are more than just beautiful. Gardening has many benefits. The natural rhythms of a garden and of plants work as a counterpart against stress. There is silence and peace in the garden. A garden stimulates creativity and there is the satisfaction and pride in growing things.
• Gardens and gardening can represent an intimate connection with life itself, giving purpose and meaning to the elderly.

The mental, physical, and emotional health benefits of gardening are for everyone. Anyone is capable of reaping the nourishing rewards that abundant Mother Nature has to offer – we need just take some time to get a little dirty with Her. Visit your local GCA Garden Centre once they open and let’s be like sunflowers that turn towards the golden potential of each new beginning.

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