{"id":29825,"date":"2024-08-22T11:00:46","date_gmt":"2024-08-22T15:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/?p=29825"},"modified":"2024-09-06T09:59:24","modified_gmt":"2024-09-06T13:59:24","slug":"gardening-as-occupational-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2024\/08\/22\/gardening-as-occupational-therapy\/","title":{"rendered":"Gardening as Occupational Therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Anne Rothfeld ~
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/a>
Plant a Little Garden, Stay Healthy at Home<\/a><\/em>, a poster by artist Brad Vetter, 2020<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gardening offers a range of social and mental benefits that often go unnoticed. Horticultural therapy is a practice that helps to restore negative moods and encourage healing and relaxation through gardening. This form of occupational therapy<\/a> can be effective and productive when patients are given time and space to engage with the soil.<\/p>\n

Why does gardening itself, not just the foods and herbs it produces, seem to be beneficial for mental and physical health?\u00a0 Home gardens widen community interactions, reducing social isolation. They draw people outside, out of themselves, and increase exposure to sunlight and the small marvels of nature. Gardens combine physical activity with social interaction and encourage new perspectives and mental states.<\/p>\n

Community gardening has its roots in the late 1800s when abandoned lots in U.S. cities and towns were made available for groups to grow food, so called \u201callotment gardens.\u201d\u00a0 Considered a \u201cform of outdoor housework,\u201d small kitchen gardening plots of fruits, vegetables, and herbs offered food security and a more affordable, nutritious, and better-tasting alternative to store-bought produce where there was limited access to affordable and high-quality foodstuffs.<\/p>\n

Green spaces and their sensory stimulation alter the brain activity called alpha rhythms, which release mood lifting hormones. Today, research studies<\/a> continue to investigate how simply looking at nature, observing the movement of trees and hearing the birds sing has beneficial effects on mood and mental health. Advocates of horticultural therapy<\/a> argue that it enhances memory, cognitive functions, task initiation, language abilities, and social interaction. In physical rehabilitation, it aids in strengthening muscles and improving coordination, balance, and endurance. In some cases, exposure to plants and gardening can reduce reliance on medications, especially for patients with chronic health issues. Occupational therapy in the garden can lead to less stress and feelings of loneliness as well as restoration of dexterity and strength.\u00a0 The rhythmic nature of gardening tasks often induces a meditative state which helps manage built-up anger and stress.<\/p>\n

\"four <\/a>
Base Hospital No. 9. Chateauroux, France: Occupational therapy- Hospital garden from the east fence, ca. 1918 National Library of Medicine #101396439 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Men <\/a>
Occupational Therapy, Garden and Patients, ca 1918 National Library of Medicine #101405673 <\/div> <\/div>
\"Men <\/a>
Occupational Therapy, ca. 1918 National Library of Medicine #101405680 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

Photographs from the First World War (1914\u20131918) attest to prisoners, civilians, and convalescents gardening to help recover from the trauma of war. Gardening and warfare represent two starkly different aspects of human experience: one involves cultivation and creativity, while the other entails aggression and destruction. Medical professionals have long recognized that recovery from shell-shock, now generally known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder<\/a> (PTSD), is slow a process of healing and rebuilding after traumatic experiences. Indirectly, doctors and nurses learned that vegetable gardens located near field hospitals provided patients with therapeutic connections to nature. Physical activity in the garden produced positive changes for patients\u2014they felt calm, grounded themselves, and improved cognitive functions.\u00a0 In 2020 book The Well Gardened Mind<\/a><\/em>, Sue Stuart Smith suggests that gardening offered associations of home and safety amid the madness of war and refuge from the \u2018turbulence of the world\u2019 by releasing the \u2018turbulence of the mind.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Pomodoro Tomatoes<\/a> developed by Henry and Geri Swan, 2018<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In his 1973 book Awakenings<\/a><\/em>, neurologist Oliver Sacks advocated for walks in parks and gardens for the calming effects on brains, including for people with Alzheimer\u2019s disease<\/a> and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder<\/a> (ADHD). Gardening can be a means to self-discovery and self-confidence. The benefits for the brain include development of new skills, better communication through interaction with others, pursuit of curiosity, and sensory stimuli. Gardening invokes all five senses: getting hands dirty and feeling different textures of earth and plants; seeing the subtle or dramatic color variation in foliage and flowers; smelling the scents of herbs, flowers and wet soils; hearing the surrounding sounds of nature, like birdsong, bees buzzing and wind in the trees; and at last tasting the foodstuffs you have grown<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gardening is an aerobic exercise that expends calories like working out in a gym. Gardening can be physically demanding, as horticultural duties include weeding, watering, digging, sowing, and pruning. Digging in the dirt, raking leaves, and mowing the grass are particularly calorie intense.\u00a0 Cutting back vegetation and ripping out weeds can be constructive forms of aggression while working through anger and anxieties. Physical exercise through gardening can reduce blood pressure, pulse rate, and muscle tension. The body bends and shapes itself in new ways, connecting to the natural world through the physicality of the garden.<\/p>\n

But you don\u2019t have to go outside to get some benefit from horticultural therapy; indoor gardening provides benefits as well.\u00a0 Indoor plants remove toxins and dust from the air while providing sensory experiences during recovery. Indoor gardening can be simple and easy, starting with small pots of flowers and culinary herbs that sit in windows: mint for iced teas and desserts, basil for tomato dishes, oregano for seasoning, rosemary for grilling. Any way you do it, gardening, as an occupational therapy, can promote holistic healing, supporting recovery from mental, physical, and emotional stress and illness.<\/p>\n

Learn about NLMs rich and varied collection of \u201cherbals<\/a>,\u201d books devoted to the description of medicinal plants with instructions on how to use them and explore the NLM Herb Garden on YouTube.<\/em><\/p>\n