A garden represents life. It is the birth of life, death and everything in between. It is beautiful. For many people, the garden is their own personal window and the most relaxing part of their home. You can enjoy it alone or with your friends. Either way, the time you spend around nature is the time of your healing — both mental and physical. But did you know that getting your fingers dirty in the garden can increase your serotonin levels too?
In China, they have a saying: “Pleasure for one hour is a bottle of wine. Pleasure for one year is a marriage. Pleasure for a lifetime is a garden.” It seems like they knew what they were talking about.
You have probably read that gardening can calm you down and make you a happier person. It’s because of two things: exercise and bacteria. The first reason is a “no brainer” and we all know that any physical exercise promotes a healthy body — with a healthy body comes a healthy spirit. The second reason is the Mycobacterium vaccae. This is a nonpathogenic bacterium that lives naturally in soil.
A group of scientists at Henry Wellcome Laboratories for Integrative Neuroscience and Endocrinology in Bristol, England, studied this bacterium and found out that it stimulates a newly discovered group of neurons, increases levels of serotonin and decreases the level of anxiety. The group of mice they fed with this bacterium finished the “maze test” twice as fast as and with less demonstrated anxiety than the control group.
Get Your Hands Dirty
So, you are having a bad day and you want to relax. Don’t just reach for a glass of wine. Go into a garden (yours or a public garden), grab a trowel and give those plants a little bit of love. It will lift your spirits! This information is backed by results of a poll published in a famous magazine “Gardener’s World”.According to that poll of 1,500 UK adults over 80% of gardeners are satisfied with their lives compared with 67% of non-gardeners. 93% of gardeners also said that gardening improves their mood.
And where does all that happiness come from?
Fitness
There are seven basic movements the human body can perform and all the exercises are only variations of those seven movement patterns. These are: pull, push, squat, lunge, hinge, rotation, and gait. Any other unnatural movement pattern would only make you hurt yourself.
As you can see from the list of those movement patterns, sitting and standing still at one spot during the entire day are not on the list. That sedentary lifestyle, we are all sentenced to because of our jobs, is very bad for the waistline and the heart.
Exercise helps with this. You can walk, run, do some yoga, hit the gym, or spend some time in your garden. Yeah, gardening is a great workout. It maybe doesn’t feel like the equivalent of a good gym workout but a recent study found that many gardening tasks quality as a moderate — to high — intensity physical activity. The time you spend in the garden will make you pull, push, squat, rotate, gait, hinge, and lunge. In other words, you will do a full-body workout while taking care of your plants.
Just an hour of weeding burns around 100 calories and an hour of digging burns up to 250 calories. The best thing is that it completely absorbs you and you don’t even notice the passage of time.
Getaway
Having your garden and looking after it can keep you connected to the world around you. That small piece of nature will move you away from the stressful city vibe and bring you peace.
The Feeling of Accomplishment
When you garden you make things grow, you create food and transform your surroundings. You are creating things. The satisfaction you get from accomplishing those things will keep you happy even when you feel dissatisfied with other things in your life.
That process of nurture creates a sort of natural optimism in you. It teaches you that no matter how bad the weather is, no matter what comes next, there is always the next day, next month, and next year.
Bacteria — I Am Not Kidding
Recent research revealed that the soil itself makes us happier. It’s because of a specific bacteria that lives in the soil. When you touch the soil with your bare hands or inhale it as you are taking care of your plants, you take traces of Mycobacterium vaccae into your body. This chemical sends the information to your body that it needs to release a chemical known as serotonin. This is a natural antidepressant and it makes you happier and more optimistic.
It’s not magic — it’s nature.
