How Gardening Can Help Reduce Anxiety
The act of gardening itself can have a huge impact on mental health.
As a Garden Designer, I always aim to create designs for my clients with a positive impact that lifts the spirits of anyone using the space. Garden design is more than just aesthetic value. I have seen firsthand how gardens and the act of gardening can improve our mental well-being, reduce feelings of anxiety and increase our self-worth.
I started exploring the relationship between gardening and mental health when studying Landscape Architecture at university. My final year thesis was about therapeutic gardens. During my research, I discovered many ways gardens can provide therapy. In today’s post, I will share specific details of how visiting or working in gardens provides these benefits.
Color Theory
It is widely understood that spending time in natural settings can help improve our mental well-being. There are several reasons for this, but one of the most important is related to how our environment affects us.
The use of colours directly impacts how we perceive spaces and how it makes us feel. For example, you may be surprised to discover that many prisons and local jails are painting the walls and ceilings of holding cells in bubblegum-pink. Pink is a colour that we associate with femininity, love, and compassion. Research has shown that it has a calming effect on people and increases feelings of empathy.
Pink is not always abundant in plants as it typically manifests as short-lived blossoms. There are more common colours that can have similar effects on well-being. Cool colours tend to have a calming effect, and lighter green and blue tones are easy to create in a garden.
Blue colours are especially important, as this colour is associated with a sense of order and calm. Blue tones can also trick our eyes and make a space feel bigger than it is, which may prevent a space from feeling claustrophobic. For this reason, I often use drifts of Blue Ryegrass in gardens as it can cover a large area quite easily and has the secondary benefit of breaking up the monotony of too much green.
This can also be achieved with artificial materials. A great example is in the Grotto at Painshill Park, a landscape park in London. Here, the grotto is decorated with crystals that reflect the nearby lake water to create a blue/grey vibe that immediately calms any visitor.
Nurturing
The act of gardening itself can have a huge impact on mental health. Compared to other “space designers” like architects or interior designers, garden design has a unique quality. This quality is that the materials used to build a garden are mostly organic (i.e. trees, plants and soil). These materials will grow to shape the garden into different forms over time. Nurturing a plant from a small seedling to a fully grown shrub is a very fulfilling experience.
This is something that Growing Works Nursery in Camarillo, California, has been using to aid their efforts in supporting the Turning Point Foundation. The Turning Point Foundation is a Ventura County non-profit committed to building a healthier community by offering proactive treatment for adults struggling with mental health.
The Growing Works Nursery was set up to aid mental health recovery by providing supportive employment for the mentally ill. Growing a plant from seeds or cuttings, through to putting it out for sale, and selling the plant to a customer is all done in-house. The nurturing one provides in this process is rewarded with the plant’s commercial success. One cannot help but feel a sense of achievement when a months-long process (sometimes years for bigger shrubs and trees) is rewarded with success and a feeling not dissimilar to raising your children or nurturing your family pet from puppyhood to adulthood.
As gardeners, we spend so much time nurturing our plants that we often feel a close bond. I know when Spring rolls around, and the hard work of Fall and Winter garden maintenance is paid off with blossoms, and the next generation of birds and other garden companions start coming alive, I feel my anxieties die down and finally relax, ready to start enjoying my summer.
The elders always told me, 'Mighty oaks from little acorns grow'. If I become the steward of this growth, it will be very rewarding and give me something to look forward to even when I feel anxious about the future.
Sensory Gardens
While there are mental health benefits from spending time in any type of garden, there is a specific type of garden design that can provide therapy for sufferers of anxiety. This type of garden is known as the Sensory Garden.
Sensory Gardens are an evolution of Gardens for the Blind. Gardens for the Blind started to appear across the UK after the First World War as a form of therapy to help reduce anxiety among wounded soldiers who had lost their sight in battle.
Plants were selected not for their visual appeal but for their appeal to the senses of smell and touch. Plants with interesting textures, like Lamb’s Ear (Stachys byzantina), would be combined with pleasant-smelling plants such as Rosemary or Lavender. Providing sensory stimuli was found to greatly reduce the anxiety felt by those suffering from the trauma of losing their sight.
Moving forward to the 21st Century, we now know that sensory gardens can provide therapy that reduces anxiety for anyone, not just wounded warriors. In particular, sensory gardens are of great benefit to sufferers of dementia and people with autism. I believe that sensory gardens can be a great anxiety reliever for anyone who visits them.
The Ingredients of a Modern Sensory Garden
The modern version of a sensory garden is more than just providing stimuli for the non-visual senses. Visual stimuli are now incorporated into a sensory garden but unlike a traditional garden, the emphasis is not on the simple color of the flowers or the foliage. Instead, plants may be chosen for their kinetic quality, such as bunch grasses that shake when blown by a breeze. Plants will also be selected for their iridescence, such as Coral Bells or Peacock Ferns.
Stimulating our senses of smell, taste, touch and sound can trigger memories in different ways than visual prompts. Triggering memories is an important part of reducing the anxiety created by the bouts of confusion that early-onset dementia patients suffer from.
This is known as Reminiscence Therapy, where the recollection of memories from the past can help people with dementia remember things more clearly. For this reason, a sensory garden designed for dementia patients is sometimes called a "memory garden". Due to their propensity for getting confused and disoriented, a Sensory Garden for dementia sufferers should be easy to navigate. New and unusual places can be quite anxiety-inducing for many people, especially those afflicted with dementia or autism.
Some of the best sensory gardens will stimulate multiple senses, without overwhelming visitors. In terms of reducing anxiety, I think a lot of us can relate to this.
For example, my preferred stress-reliever is solo mountain biking. Being alone on a trail takes me out of my daily environment and provides numerous stimuli for my senses in the form of interesting views, smells and sounds as well as the tactile nature of the sport. The fear I should have for my safety is less elevated because I feel less anxious.
I feel empowered after a ride.
I feel focused when my senses are stimulated.
I have less anxiety when I feel focused and empowered.
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