A healthy garden is directly proportional to a healthy mind and body. You might have heard your parents telling you over and over again about the importance of visiting parks, sitting in the garden for a while, and keeping it clean and groomed. Well, they’re absolutely right and you should definitely listen to them. Visiting a healthy garden helps in alleviating your mood and improve your well being.
If you’re someone who constantly stays in a bad mood, you need to sit in your garden and experience nature’s call at least 10 minutes every day, especially in the morning. So take your mower out of the garage and start grooming. Gardeners at https://lawn.com.au/lawn-mowing/bundaberg/ recommend mowing your lawn every few weeks to keep it healthy and fresh. So, if the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, it could be that you’re not mowing your lawn properly or regularly. If you don’t have time for it, you can take a weekend off or hire a professional service that’ll do a much better job than you would.
Here are 8 benefits of having a healthy garden to improve your mood and mental health:
1. It Relieves Stress and Anxiety
Stress and anxiety are a common part of our everyday lives now. With the increasing costs, workload, and family management, all your mental energy is drained in worrying about other factors but you. If you’re someone who suffers from anxiety or stays stressful most of the time, you need a healthy garden fix. While you’re amidst colorful flowers and green plantations, you tend to live in the present and feel the peace that hits your senses. The pleasant scent and magnificent view help in lowering your cortisol levels, making you feel more relaxed.
2. It Can Improve Your Social Life
If you live in an apartment, you will have to visit your society’s garden or a public park that’s well maintained. In this way, you get to meet new people or engage with your acquaintances that you already know or have met before. This helps in improving your social life and making new contacts and connections. You might meet your best friend here; you never know. Socializing helps in improving people’s moods, especially if they’re fond of the people they meet. There are also social groups such as laughter clubs or yoga clubs among elderly people, which are generally held in a healthy garden.
3. It Is Healthy for Your Bones
Now, we know that this isn’t directly related to improving your mood, but a healthy body leads to a healthy mind, which ultimately keeps you in a good mood. Staying in the sun for some time, especially during the morning hours, helps in the absorption of Vitamin D. Vitamin D is necessary for your body to absorb calcium. Unless you don’t drink milk or eat fish, you might suffer from a lack of Vitamin D if you don’t expose your skin to the sun for a while. Make sure to wear sunscreen as the sun’s harmful rays can damage your skin.
4. You Feel Happier
Staying in a healthy garden for long tends to make you happier and improves your mood. Gardening activities are also meant to elevate your mood. You are introduced to the feeling of growing new life, which can make a big difference to its surroundings when it grows entirely. This feeling of fulfillment can lead to the release of endorphins, which makes a person happy. This is a great mood booster and we’d recommend sitting in the garden every day for a few minutes to feel happy.
5. You Get Fresh Air
The smell of fresh, crisp air in the morning is inspired by a number of people who don’t have a garden or access to nearby parks. Since gardens are surrounded by plantations and flowers, you can have the benefit of getting fresh air every day. In today’s polluted world, getting fresh air to breathe is difficult. While you have your beautiful and healthy garden within your vicinity, you should take the maximum benefit from it. A lot of people go out of their houses when they feel tired in the anticipation of fetching ‘fresh air.’
6. It Increases Your Attention Span
According to the researchers at the American Journal of Public Health, children who suffered from ADHD felt better after being in a garden and carrying out relevant activities. It also helps in increasing your attention span, thus helping in increasing concentration and learning. Studies have proven the importance of gardening in improving attention span, and hence they have included it as an additional subject within their curriculum. And, surely, attentive students get high grades.
7. It Increases Your Self-Confidence
Visiting a garden can take your mind off your phones and social media. Young adults and teenagers feel a lot of pressure academically and socially by looking at their peers on social media who seem to be doing extremely well. It affects a lot of people and lowers their self-esteem, making them think that they aren’t ‘good enough.’ Once you head out, you get a much-deserved break from these technological innovations that simply make you more miserable. This also teaches you the importance of real things as compared to the fake lives that others have created online. It gives you a sense of freedom and boosts your self-esteem.
8. Listen to Nature’s Voice
Visiting gardens and parks come with another added benefit. You can listen to nature’s voice that includes the melodious chirping of the birds and the pleasant sound of dripping water. Listening to these natural sounds and viewing the picturesque composition can evoke happy emotions. We all know that flowers make you less stressful and induce a calming feeling. Basically, all we are trying to say is, your brain releases the feel-good components named serotonin and dopamine that are supposed to make you feel happier and uplift your mood.
So basically, visiting a garden on a regular basis feels like therapy. Just try sitting in a garden for a few minutes every day. You’d start noticing changes in your mental health. It will free your mind of worries and unnecessary stress. You’ll feel happier, less worried, and relieved of mental obligations. Every since the modern back yard came into being, everyone who has one has the opportunity to have a garden.