Designing Your Garden for Better Mental Health

(StatePoint) Gardening is not only a means for beautifying outdoor spaces and growing delicious foods. According to those who spend significant time in the yard, getting outside can also support your wellbeing.

“Gardening is good for the mind, it’s good for the soul and it’s good for the body,” said legendary football coach, Vince Dooley. “I enjoy coming out to garden, and when I finish, I feel like I’ve done something, and I feel good.”

Landscape architect Doug Scott of Redeem Your Ground recently visited Dooley in Athens, Ga. to discuss gardening and mental health. Here are some of the insights they shared:

Health Benefits

• Active benefits: Gardening exercises the body and clears the mind. Studies show that increased outdoor exposure leads to fewer long-term health problems, helping improve cardiovascular fitness, flexibility, strength, and dexterity—all leading to better mental health. Simply planting, growing, harvesting and maintaining plants gives you a direct emotional boost. Why? Gardening helps foster nurturing instincts and restores a sense of hope and purpose, ultimately improving self-esteem.

• Passive benefits: Don’t have a green thumb? Don’t worry. Scientific evidence proves that just being in nature has positive impacts on stress levels and brain chemistry. It can also lower blood pressure, increase concentration and improve mood. What’s more, being outdoors offers a deeper sense of belonging and a new sense of purpose outside the daily grind.

Designing Your Garden

Scott advises designing your garden to reflect how you want to live outside. He typically builds “rooms” connected by meandering paths for resting, unwinding, and feeling restored. However, your outdoor spaces don’t always need to be quiet. They can encourage activity as well. If you enjoy company, create gathering spaces. Or, if you have hobbies that can be done outdoors like exercising, painting or writing, you can set aside areas for them.

Finally, Scott recommends designing your garden to awaken your five senses. Here’s how:

1. Sight: Choose calming colors, or those that bring you joy. The simple sight of a breathtaking array of plants or an arrangement of favorite flowers is bound to give your mental health a boost.

2. Taste: Growing your own food will provide you with an incredibly rewarding harvest. Not only will you be able to enhance meals with the fruits of your labor, you’ll get the personal satisfaction of a job well done.

3. Hearing: Among the plants and flowers, add fixtures, such as wind chimes and water features, that’ll produce soothing sounds. And with the new habitat you’ve created, you’ll enjoy bird song, too!

4. Touch: From the light, feathery textures of petals to the rough surfaces of bark or bush stems, touch offers a deeper sense of connection to nature.

5. Smell: You may already use aromatherapy indoors. Take this concept outside by growing fragrant flowers and herbs, so you can literally “stop to smell the roses.”

Scott and Dooley offer more insights in “Garden Therapy,” a recent episode of “Done-In-A-Weekend Projects,” an original series from lawn care equipment manufacturer, Exmark. To watch the video, visit Backyard Life, which is part of a unique multimedia destination with a focus on helping homeowners make the most of outdoor spaces. There you can also download additional tips and view other Exmark Original Series videos.

By gardening, your mental health will be better off for it. Just be sure to start small, simple and stress-free.

PHOTO SOURCE: Exmark

PHOTO CAPTION: Landscape architect Doug Scott says gardening is good for the mind.

More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More Landscaping/Gardening Information:

Related Articles

Come With Me To The Casbah!
A ripe persimmon is a thing of beauty - sweet, succulent and an amazing shade of orange-red. Orange and red continue to be popular colors in decorating this year but 2004's shades are softer and more vibrant, like ripe persimmons and pomegranates.
Multi Purpose Tree - Sugar Palm
Palm family is unique in the aspect that most of its members have muli purpose benefits to the mankind, unrivalled by few other trees. There are several palm species such as Borassus, Areca, Sago, Fish Tail etc.
Gardening for Birds Part 2
We've had some well needed rain this past week, though it makes it a bit difficult to get chores done outside.We're past the last frost date for my area so now I can get some planting done.
10 Free Gardening Products
One of the pleasurable spin-offs in organic gardening is finding alternative ways of coming up with the same, if not better, end result..
The Basics Of Pruning
The technique of pruning varies with the type of rose and the landscape purpose for which it was planted, whether it's growing in the ground or in a container. Pruning can range from removing unwanted buds to severely excising canes.
Suet Facts and Tips
If you are like many people, backyard birding is a hobby for you whether you actively encourage visits from birds or not. One way to attract birds is to put out suet -- beef fat -- and watch the crowds stop by and devour the treat.
Think Vintage for Your Garden
Container gardeners take note. Tired of clay pots? Think vintage, because when you do, there'll be lots to choose from.
Lifes a Beach--A Shore Theme in your Outdoor Space
Twentieth century American architect Phillip Johnson once said, "I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?" Mr.
Commercial and Residential Flagpoles
The world's tallest unsupported flagpole is located in Amman, Jordan. Erected in 2003, the carbon steel pole juts 416 feet into the sky and weighs a staggering 190,000 pounds.
Fertilizing Your Water Lilies...
Unfortunately, sunlight is not enough.Your water lilies will grow, thrive, and bloom much better if youget in the habit of fertilizing them regularly.
A Teak Chair - Create a Livable Outdoor Space with One
When creating a comfortable, usable outdoor space, nothing could me more inviting and warm than furnishing that space with natural products such as wood. Often, though, there are problems associated with wood furnishings.
Grey Water- Not Drinking Water- For Your Garden
The average home can reduce their water consumption by around 30% by re-using grey water on their garden.The figures are compelling.
Granite Flexible Preformed Rock Ponds
More than just a Preformed PondTraditionally, preformed ponds are large shells, which are extremely burdensome and difficult to transport. For example, a typical preformed pond kit would come in a box that is 60 x 48 x 24 , which is too large for many car trunk sizes.
Vermicomposting - Worm Composters For Eco-Friendly Waste Disposal and Recycling
Worms are not only the gardener's best friend, they are also the recycler's new found best friend as well. Nature's little waste disposal experts have found a new place in eco-conscious household's across the globe as more and more people are catching on to the idea of using worms' special talents to dispose of their organic household waste.
Park Benches
One of the best ways to create a warm and inviting outdoor space is to incorporate the use of park benches into your outdoor decor. Whether they are simple or grand, park benches send a subtle message to your neighbors and guests that you want your outdoor space to be appreciated and enjoyed by all.
Gardening on a Budget
When we moved into our south Anchorage log home I had glorious plans for the 1/3 acre lot. Some previous owner had chopped down every tree counting on the neighboring woodlands for green and shade.
How to Create a Zen Garden
When you hear the term "Zen Garden" the picture conjured up is of a dry landscape with rocks surrounded by carefully raked gravel which invites you to withdraw from the noise of the world outside and to enter into silent meditation. Some say that zen priests adopted the dry landscape style in the eleventh century as an aid to create a deeper understanding of the zen concepts, but others hold that the Japanese Zen Garden is a myth.
Amish Furniture on the Front Porch
While shopping on line the other day at www.stoveramishfurniture.
Create a Hummingbird Garden Habitat
It's not difficult to create a garden that will attract hummingbirds, but if you'd like to build a habitat in which they will happily nest and live throughout the northern summer, you need to provide them with more than a sugar-water feeder and a plant or two. An active hummingbird garden doesn't need to be large, but it will have all of the following key ingredients to attract and keep the attention of "nature's fairies".
Moss on Lawns
Just about right now, we start to see moss on lawns and the plaintive cry goes up, "How do we stop it?"The first thing to understand is that moss is not going to survive in a healthy lawn. The existence of moss is a symptom that the lawn is not in good shape.