Question:
I'm researching a story on how gardening reduces stress.
Anyone out there into gardening primarily as a way to relax? Or perhaps
did your doctor recommend taking up gardening as a stress reducer?
Answer:
That raises the question, why do we garden in the first place? I have been
gardening most of my adult live, which has been pretty long, and I don't think I
ever thought about reducing stress with gardening. I think people who garden
have less stress, but that is because people who are ready to spend so many
hours of their time tending to vegetables and flowers are probably less prone to
stress in the first place. The stressed executive or manager would consider it
a waste of his precious time and I think it would be difficult to talk him into
it if it isn't his inclination. If he likes gardening, he will probably do so
anyway. I do it because I love the work with plants and I love the results.
I firmly believe that stress is one of the most
debilitating health issues around. I recall from a psych class some years
ago that a researcher named Selye came up with a theory about
stress...basically that we are born with a finite capacity to deal with it,
and once we use that up, we go over the edge.
I'm not sure whether gardening will reduce stress, or whether people
attracted to gardening are naturally stress-avoiders. You won't find many
naturally stress-causing aspects to gardening, as I understand the meaning
of the word. (I equate stress to a fast-paced, intense life-style, often
requiring quick decisions without all the necessary information to make a
sound decision.) Gardening is SLOW! It can take weeks to get a seed to
germinate; then it can take months for a seedling to mature into a fruit or
flower-bearing plant...not exactly the kind of activity that Type A people
are attracted to, IMO.
The other activities involved in gardening, such as soil preparation,
fertilizing, weeding, etc., tend to be somewhat forgiving, also. There are
windows of time involved in all these activities, but it's not real precise;
i.e., I know I should turn my soil for my annual flowers and vegetables in
mid-April, but if I don't do it exactly on the 15th, it can wait until the
20th - or even until the first week in May. So I don't get stressed if it's
not done on April 15th. The same with planting, weeding, and the rest. I
suppose someone could *make* it stressful by trying to adhere to a rigid
schedule, but for me it's not that way.
Somehow I can't imagine gardening as a prescription for reducing stress...if
one is stressed by other factors, I don't think gardening will help. I
found exercise to help more in reducing stress than anything else.
Gardening provides a certain amount of exercise in the spring, when you're
preparing soil and planting, but not much beyond that.
I am a stressed manager. I do garden - in part - because it does so
effectively reduce stress levels.
I garden primarily because I cannot *not* garden.
Somewhere along the way I discovered that after a really, really bad day
that going home and ripping weeds out of the ground was *very* therapeutic.
Also, when I could control nothing else in my world, my garden was my own.
Still, I couldn't control everything in it, but it didn't matter because it
was mine and it was always there.
Now that I work in a high tech field and spend much of my time on airplanes
going from one client site to another I find that gardening also balances my
life very nicely. It's about as low tech as it can get (I garden
organically) and it's about as real as it gets.
So, now that I really don't have time to garden I still do it because the
benefits are so fantastic.
That line where you describe your idea of stress describes my professional
life precisely only I do it where people's lives can be and sometimes are
hanging in the balance. I work with computer systems in hospitals - doesn't
get much more stressful than that.
Still, it is exactly the slowness of gardening that I love. It is the
balance that it provides to my life that is so wonderful.
Weeding has become my favorite gardening activity. On bad days I even name
some of those weeds before I kill them.
Also, while gardening isn't precise it does have times when things must be
done if you are to get a crop that season. I find that good - it ties me to
the seasons and the earth. It is again a balancing thing.
I find that gardening and exercise are always linked for me.
I'll be working in the garden and decide to take a walk to look at everyone
elses flowers. Also, it does greatly reduce stress for me.
I agree that gardening will reduce stress,
anytime you are ticked off or just up tight, a good hour yanking and
cussing weeds takes care of the biggest part of it. And if you name a
particular type of weed after a particular"problem" you might get the weeds
out faster or end up laughing at how funny it is to be pulling weeds instead
of hair....
I find gardening, specifically weeding, to be very stress relieving. There is
something so focused about it, satisfying, and rather mindless, too. An evening
spent out in my garden weeding a patch of soil, admiring the beauty, inhaling
the fragrances, enjoying the birds and watching the dogs frolick is about the
most relaxing activity I can think of that's legal and doesn't add useless
calories. It is a rather solitary activity though, and that may be its
attraction - its my escape from business, clients and family demands. My husband
has figured it out - when I get a little testy, his response is "don't you have
any weeding to do?"
for me it's not just the weeding, but all the "boring" maintenance
tasks that are the most stress-clearing. Until my retirement (yeah!)
last month, I would classify my workdays as quite stressful. I really
looked forward to coming home and trimming or raking or tidying up the
garden debris. Seemed to work - maybe you can sweat stress out.
