Gardening is good for your mental and physical well-being. This opinion is shared by many people who like to dig in the mud. But a new study from CU Boulder backs up that view with science.
Jill Leet, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, recruited about 300 would-be gardeners from Denver for the test. Half of them have been combined with public garden plots from Denver Urban Gardens. The other half made up the control group.
The researchers followed the participants for a year and found that the group of gardeners benefited greatly from their crops. As a result, they started eating more fiber, consuming the fruits of their labor and being more physically active, walking to and from community gardens and the garden store. Both are important measures to reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes.
Leet says the gardener group also reported lower levels of stress and anxiety. "What we hear in the qualitative interviews is that they feel paralyzed," Leet said. "The birds, the breeze are connected to this acoustic landscape. The sensations on his skin affect the ground. They talk about how to take stress off their shoulders, get their hands dirty, forget their problems, forget the things that bother them. And they build social relationships."
It's the creation of social connections that's why Leet says working on a plot in a community garden is most rewarding. However, she says that gardening at home also has some physical and mental health benefits.
“I see [gardening] as a secret health intervention. People do it because they like it, and if they like it, they're likely to follow it. And the benefit of that, among other things, is that you can start to eat better and maybe be a little more active, and that can reduce your stress and anxiety,” he said.
Leath hopes her research will attract more support and funding for community garden projects. "I would like to see a change in the health care landscape where gardens become part of a system of the kinds of interventions that are legitimate health care costs," he said, urging investment in gardens because they are a "public health strategy." . . [with] health benefits.
