Keeping plants in your home can be beneficial for so many different reasons. It can even help your overall mental health. Don’t believe it? Here are 10 amazing ways in which plants and gardening can benefit your mental health and make you feel fulfilled, happy and healthy in your everyday life.
DECREASED SYMPTOMS OF DEPRESSION
Would you be surprised to hear that plants can help you decrease symptoms of depression? Well, it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Keeping plants in your home requires you to be quite dedicated to this little hobby or activity on a daily basis. Surprisingly, gardening as an activity promotes mindfulness. It’s a very peaceful activity that helps keep you grounded in the moment. Sort of like meditation, gardening can helps you be present in the moment as you bathe in sunlight and water your plants. As it turns out, an activity like this has shown to be great at reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression.
As you are living in the moment and focusing on what you are currently doing, all your senses are equally engaged in the activity and are helping you stay mindful and fully present in the moment. This prevents your usual intrusive thoughts from running wild and feeding into your anxiety. This helps you break away from the regular train of thoughts that are usually filled with negativity and making you feel either tired of overwhelmed. Gardening can also make you feel happy by feeling a sense of accomplishment and purpose. Seeing the products of your own work grow and thrive will most definitely put a smile on your face.
LOWER LEVELS OF STRESS AND ANXIETY
Closely related to the previous aspect, there’s another side of mental health that is heavily influenced by gardening and spending time in nature. Being one with nature and surrounding yourself with plants will also help keep your stress levels down.
Nowadays we spend so much time in our day surrounded by technology. We use it for school, for our jobs, for daily communications and so on. Not to mention how rushed our daily lives seem to be and how much stress that puts on us. Sometimes, all we need is to slow down and take a deep breath. Spending time in nature allows us to do just that. It lets us have a quality break from the everyday stressful life full of worries and anxiety. Spending even 10 minutes surrounded by plants under the sunlight can help us have a refreshing mental reset. Also, the act of gardening itself will help you release a lot of stress and built-up tension.
IMPROVED MOOD
Overall, when you think about plants, flowers and gardening you probably think about nature, sunshine, and lot of positivity. Taking a bit of time out of your day just to water your plants will instantly put you in a better mood. Also, once people get into gardening and keeping flowers in their homes, it becomes a sort of a healthy addiction. As soon as you bring colour and some fresh air in with new plants you’ll soon find yourself wanting more and more. There’s just something about colourful and scented flowers bringing joy and happiness in every room.
HIGHER SELF-ESTEEM
With a sense of accomplishment and purpose every time you engage in gardening activities, your self-esteem will grow too. There is just something so fulfilling in seeing the results of your hard work. When you see that your work pays of and you get to enjoy the presence of beautiful colourful flowers in your home. No matter what you choose to plant actually, whether they are flowers or veggies, seeing the products of your gardening and seeing your gardening skills improve will instantly put you in a good mood and make you feel accomplished. It will help boost your confidence and enhance your self-perception.
IMPROVED ATTENTION
Gardening is a type of activity that requires your attention and constant care. If you have trouble focusing for too long, gardening can slowly walk you towards learning how to improve and expand your attention span over time. While gardening, you will get to enjoy some time surrounded by plants and your passion for caring for these plants will drive you to keep improving your attention span.
INCREASED SOCIAL BONDS
Gardening can be a great activity for social bonding and just generally expanding your circle of friends. Lots of people who are passionate about gardening and plants love to look for other plant lovers and start communities together where they can exchange flowers, talk about new gardening tips, and engage in gardening activities together. Wherever you live in Australia you can be sure you will find a local gardening community that you can
Also, you can always find people who are gardening in a community garden. You can engage in these activities with your family, or you can even find neighbours and friends who are interested in gardening.
This is how you can slowly but surely combat feelings of isolation and strengthen your social connections by finding people of same interests. In that manner, gardening can be a beautiful hobby that brings people together. On top of that, striving towards the same goal with a group of people who are passionate about the same hobby or activity is even more fulfilling and will brighten up your mood.
Lastly, flowers are always a great idea for presents for whenever you want to surprise someone with a nice gift or your loved one has a birthday coming up. So, if you have anyone you want to surprise and put a smile on their face you can get them a fresh flower delivery in Adelaide and they can decorate their home and think of you whenever they look at your thoughtful gift.
ESSENTIAL VITAMIN D
Certain foods can be a great source of vitamin D. However, the body absorbs the most amount of vitamin D through exposure to sunlight. Research also shows how important natural light is for depression and how much it can help reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety. Spending time in nature and outside while gardening can therefore, be very beneficial for you.
Vitamin D has so many great health benefits for human body. For instance, vitamin D supports your immune system, helps keep your bones healthy, and maintains healthy levels of calcium. So, spending time in the sun can help your health both physically and mentally. However, too much sun exposure can be damaging to our skin. Sun exposure is actually the biggest cause of premature aging and skin cancer. So, while it may boost your vitamin D, you must be careful and apply SPF when going outside to protect your skin from too much sun exposure.
A SENSE OF PURPOSE
As it has already been mentioned, gardening and keeping plants in your home will give you a great sense of purpose and accomplishment. Your ability and skill to grow, maintain and give life to something tangible will have enormously string emotional effects on you. Also, simply seeing results of your effort and the time you put into gardening will have you feeling accomplished. It will also boost your self-confidence.
HEALTHY EATING
Eating healthy meals full of nutritional value will protect your immune system, give you a lot of energy and keep you healthy. It will also protect as well as boost your mental health. So, if you choose to grow your own vegetables and fruits, not only will you have fresh and organic produce you can eat daily, but you will also save a lot of money by growing your own veggies and fruits in the comfort of your own home. It’s a great supply of vitamin-packed and natural foods coming straight from your own garden.
BETTER SLEEP
Developing a healthy sleep pattern is important for several different reasons. It is important both for your physical and mental health. While we sleep, our body and mind are resting and boosting their energy so that they can power us through the next day.
Believe it or not, gardening can help you with your sleep schedule. By spending time in nature during the day in the sunlight helps you maintain your circadian rhythm. It keeps your body on the right sleep-wake cycle. Also, gardening is such a calming hobby and since it keeps your stress and anxiety levels down, it will help sooth you and your mind so that at night when you go to bed, you can peacefully fall asleep in no time.
Conclusion
In conclusion, surrounding yourself with plants and the act of gardening itself has so many great benefits for you. They are great both for your physical and mental health. You will be eating fresh and healthy foods from your own garden, sleeping well, and on top of that you will feel accomplished for you hard work and you’ll feel less stressed. Not to mention that gardening can even help with depression and anxiety.