Green Bite: Ten reasons why gardening is therapeutic

People have various hobbies but gardening is special. It's a kind of hobby that benefits not one but several people. My mom is a self-proclaimed gardening enthusiast. She would spend hours tiling the soil and planting new seeds. All this in a tiny balcony plantation that we have. It was her corner of calm. And when she was down and out, it would energise her all over again. As a young person I never really figured this relationship but I finally sat down to find out today why gardening is therapeutic.

• It not just makes a person feel healthier as spending time in a garden is significant for quality of life; it also calms your mind down.

• Regeneration is a part of a plant’s life. For humans the outcome is psychological repair? While it is a regular almost emotionless phenomenon in plants, it bring much more intensity in our life. Could there be a story in the process of growth and resurrection?

• It is a fact that people with depression if start gardening with full devotion can create a sea of change in their lives and mental health. It makes a person feel a feeling of goodness.

• The ability to make a plant grow and flourish gives a gardener a source of stability and self-confidence as it takes a lot of precision to sustain a plant from perishing.

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• It decreases stress and calms the nerves. It also reduces a hormone that participates in responding to stress called cortisol.

• A research done in 2011 --Journal of Therapeutic Horticulture--at a juvenile rehabilitation centre in southwestern Ohio, America showed horticulture therapy encouraged children to feel more optimistic. They were in a better position to control their emotional and behavioural problems.

• As it is more-often-than-not a one-person job, it gets us away from people’s judgments and thoughts. So in a way a garden gives you more freedom to be one with yourself.

•  One can find peace in the garden and can also reconnect with their life-giving impulse.

• A good pruning session and even cajoling the seeds sitting in your garden has the power to refresh the spirits of a gardener.

• Any age is a good age to start gardening and believe you me, it makes us all nurturers and connects us with living beings other than humans and a animals.