My wife and I have a flower garden in front of our house and a vegetable garden at the back. I do the digging and planting in the gardens, and my wife contributes by asking important questions, such as “Why are the tomatoes so small?”
I respond by asking a question that men have been asking since the beginning of time: “Does size really matter?”
“It depends,” she says. “Are these supposed to be cherry tomatoes?”
I shrug. “I’m not sure what they identify as.”
In case it isn’t apparent, I am the gardener in our family and my wife is the quality control inspector. She plays a critical role that I do not want to diminish in any way. Without her, we would not have a vegetable garden. It was her idea to create one, overriding my idea to spend more time on the couch.
It’s not that gardening takes a ton of work, but you have to invest quite a bit of time and effort to get started. And once you’ve created the garden, you have to continually water, fertilize and weed your garden. You may also have to do some running: dash outside to shoo away a rabbit from your garden. And dash inside to escape an angry bee.
You could pay someone to do the gardening for you, as many people do, but then you’d be giving away most of the health benefits. You’d still get the benefit of enjoying a beautiful garden and eating fresh vegetables, but the gardener would get the exercise, a boost to their brain health and some stress relief.
Actually, I’m not sure how much stress relief you get from gardening if it’s your actual job. But scientific studies have shown that gardening reduces cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone. One study even showed that gardening is a more effective stress-reliever and more relaxing than reading books, especially if you’re reading a book titled, “Inflation: Why You’ll Never Be Able to Retire.”
Gardening gives you exercise that can range from low-intensity (weeding or raking) to mid-intensity (digging or pushing a wheelbarrow) to high intensity (doing high knee kicks after a red ant bites you). Gardening can also improve your flexibility. You sometimes have to bend over backwards to accommodate the weather. You can’t garden during a thunderstorm. And when the temperature hits 90, it’s much safer to watch other people garden on YouTube.
What most people overlook about gardening is its positive impact on brain health, as scientific studies have shown. “Beyond physical benefits, gardening provides mental stimulation — planning, remembering plant care and problem-solving — which engages memory and executive function, supporting slower cognitive decline over time,” Dr. Smita Patel, an integrative neurologist and sleep medicine physician at Endeavor Health, recently told the Washington Post.
Exercise in general has been shown to boost brain health, but here are some ways that gardeners improve their mental health:
1. Counting. Gardeners do a lot of counting. If they’re growing tomatoes, they know the number of plants they have, as well as the total number of tomatoes. If you ask them, they may not be able to give you an exact number, but trust me, if one of the tomatoes goes missing, they’ll be able to describe it in detail to the police.
2. Problem-solving. As a gardener, you encounter all sorts of problems that you need to solve. One of the most common problems is how to keep your vegetables from being eaten by someone other than you. It’s good to share your harvest, but not with anyone who doesn’t express gratitude, such as those pesky rabbits. (I actually love having rabbits in our yard, but I’d love them more if they obeyed the “KEEP OUT” sign in my garden. Perhaps I need to be more specific: “No rabbits beyond this point!”)
3. Connection with nature. Just as owning a pet helps you combat loneliness, so does caring for plants, watching them grow, and having regular conversations with them. Even if you don’t talk to your plants, spending a few minutes with them each day builds a connection. When your plant is droopy, you feel sad. And when it produces a fruit or flower, you feel so good, you want to hug the plant. But you resist the urge. The neighbors might be watching.
