Gardening for Stress Relief

A recent study in the Netherlands suggests that gardening
can fight stress even better than other relaxing leisure
activities. After completing a stressful task, two groups of
people were instructed to either read indoors or garden for
30 minutes. Afterward, the group that gardened reported
being in a better mood than the reading group, and they also
had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
"We live in a society where we're just
maxing ourselves out all the time in terms
of paying attention," says Andrea Faber
Taylor, Ph.D., a horticulture instructor and
researcher in the Landscape and Human
Health Laboratory at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Humans have a finite capacity for the kind of directed
attention required by cell phones and email and the like,
Taylor says, and when that capacity gets used up we tend to
become irritable, error-prone, distractible, and stressed out.
Fortunately this "attention fatigue" appears to be reversible.
Following a theory first suggested by University of
Michigan researchers in the 1980s, Taylor and other experts
have argued that we can replenish ourselves by engaging in
"involuntary attention," an effortless form of attention that
we use to enjoy nature.
Trading your BlackBerry for blackberry bushes is an
excellent way to fight stress and attention fatigue, Taylor
says, as the rhythms of the natural environment and the
repetitive, soothing nature of many gardening tasks are all
sources of effortless attention.
Gardening also gets you out in the fresh air and sunshine—
and it also gets your blood moving. "There are lots of
different movements in gardening, so you get some exercise
benefits out of it as well," says William Maynard, the
community garden program coordinator for the City of
Sacramento's Department of Parks and Recreation.
Gardening is hardly pumping iron, and unless you're hauling
wheelbarrows of dirt long distances every day, it probably
won't do much for your cardiovascular fitness. But digging,
planting, weeding, and other repetitive tasks that require
strength or stretching are excellent forms of low-impact
exercise, especially for people who find more vigorous
exercise a challenge, such as those who are older, have
disabilities, or suffer from chronic pain.