How Gardening Helps Your Mental Health

There is something being around plants and flowers that is peaceful and sirene about like being on the beach.  There is something even more special when you put the work in to grow them yourself.  It’s a place to not only grow healthy food, but it is also great for your mental health.  The thing I love about gardening is that you don’t have to have a huge spot of land, you can grow a garden to fit whatever your lifestyle may be.  You can start a container garden.  I am warning you, it is so addictive. 🙂 

Gardening even has extrodinary benefits to our body beyond eating the healthy home grown fruits and veggies.  By doing the work to maintain your garden, there will be lots of routine physical exercises that you can get in.  Now I can understand why my daddy calls gardening and farming a hobby.  He has farmed for 40 years of his life since being a young boy.  

Today, I want to share 5 things that having a garden has helped me with from a mental health standpoint. 

1.) Accept what we can’t control – Growing a garden depends a lot on Mother Nature and not every plant you plant will grow like you expect it to.  You never know what will happen from day to day with it, so you accept and adjust. The same as you’re supposed to in life.

2.) No matter how much you plan, it won’t be perfect. I’m a planner and perfectionist, so this one is for me. You can plan, but know that it won’t always be perfect. Don’t let being a perfectionist lead to frustration which them leads to a lot of missed opportunities. No matter how you plan your garden, with bugs, weather, plant disease…it just won’t always be perfect.

3.) Being present- I always say this- you can be physically present, but it’s no good if you’re not mentally present. With the social world we live in, it’s so easy to not be present because well…devices, we’re always on them.

Lately, I have made decisions that it was most important to be in the moment rather than posting about it on social. When I’m in my garden, it seems to force me to just want to be into whatever I’m doing. You want to feel the wind, hear the birds…just connect with nature. Be present.

4.) Helps develop a growth mindset – in gardening you win some and lose some. You will make a lot of mistakes and the more mistakes you make you will learn and grow.

5.) Helps to form connections – From the store, to the nail shop to the neighborhood, I can’t tell you how many connections I’ve had from gardening. In fact, one of my closest friends today started because we have gardening in common. It’s been a good time for her to learn about where I’m from and me learn about where she’s from just from the food we grow in our gardens. We’re all better when we share our experiences.

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