The Garden of Eden, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Johnny Appleseed’s trees, Washington’s Mount Vernon, Monet’s Gardens, Thoreau’s Walden Pond, Louis XIV’s Gardens at Versailles. Our deep connection to nature is nothing new. But in the spring of 2020, in the midst of the first COVID-19 wave, some Americans reawakened to that connection. The week before the lockdown began, garden suppliers saw sales of plants, seeds, and bulbs hit record highs.
While some may be discovering a love of green and growing things for the first time, many made it a practice long before the pandemic. A report from Garden Research found that gardening hit a record high in 2018, with 77% of all U.S. households doing some sort of it. The same report found that millennials made up 29% of all gardening households and that at least one houseplant lives in 30% of all homes.
With society largely relegated to their homes for much of the year, enthusiasm for gardening has grown. Whether it’s people trying their green thumb with a few succulents or expert cultivators expanding their garden beds, the benefits are unambiguous: Caring for plants is good for us in almost every conceivable way.
The gifts of growing
Research has shown that plants have a power to decrease pain and stress that seems almost magical. Many of the benefits seem quite logical—like how gardening outdoors provides moderate- to high-intensity physical activity and increases your vitamin D intake. Other more fascinating benefits abound as well. A 2015 study found that plants in a workplace boosted creativity, productivity, and positive feelings. How can something as simple as a houseplant have such healing effects?
Immersed in the outdoors and medicine for more than 30 years, Kimberly Allen is a Ph.D. candidate at Saybrook University studying Mind-Body Medicine and Integrative and Functional Nutrition. She’s a kayaking and mountain climbing instructor, while also holding certifications as an emergency nurse and a family nurse practitioner. She also happens to be well-acquainted with the power of plants.
Allen notes that gardening offers its own physical benefits. “Gardening does more than just enhance our overall sense of mental health and well-being,” she explains. “Physiologically, exposure to soil is great for our microbiome. Exposure to soil bacteria such as lactobacillus and bifidobacteria are known to increase cognition and boost mood. So we gain a sense of calm and happiness by just inhaling the soil without even knowing it.”
“I think we understand intuitively how plants benefit us. There’s something that seems to really resonate right now for people with plants during COVID-19,” Allen says. “I see the way people are buying houseplants and seeds now as similar to how traditionally people brought evergreen into their homes in the dark days of winter. We’ve done this for centuries, and science is just recently giving us a little insight into why.”
Long before Christianity began the celebration of Christmas, many civilizations brought trees that remained green inside their homes. Some cultures believed that evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits, and illness, and research is showing now, that in a way, the illness part may be true. A study published in 2012 found that trees, flowers, vegetables, and fruit produce antimicrobial chemicals called phytoncides. These chemicals are an immune reaction to ward off predators, but they have a tonic effect on humans—boosting our immune systems while lowering our stress response.
Terri Goslin-Jones, Ph.D., lead faculty of the Creativity Studies Department at Saybrook and an avid gardener, elaborates on the cause and effect of our relationship with plants.
“Gardening promotes exercise and being in nature, which leads to fitness and often healthier eating, which then decreases risk of illness,” Dr. Goslin-Jones says. “You’re getting out in the sunshine and fresh air. Gardening is holistically great for us.”
Plants and us
In 1974, Dr. Edward O. Wilson argued in his book Biophilia that humans have an intense, innate attraction to nature and living things. As much as humans respond to plants, plants respond to us—whether that response is a simple reaction to care or neglect, like perking up after a watering, or the more complex responses that research is just starting to explore, like whether plants have memories or respond to sounds.
Read related: Bringing The Outdoors In
“As you start to look at nature and plant life as part of the universe, there is this intuitive communication that we might not be aware of in everyday living,” Dr. Goslin-Jones says. “But once you start to immerse yourself with a plant inside your house or outside, it starts to interact with you in a very unique, special way.”
Empirical research into the intelligence and responsiveness of plants is still in a fledgling stage, but it makes sense that caring for a living thing can have deep mental and emotional benefits for people of many different walks of life.
Spending time in a garden was shown to improve short-term memory in patients with advanced dementia, and prisoners who took part in green prison programs in which they gardened and spent time with plants had 10% lower recidivism rates. One study also found that nature-based activities could be useful in treating post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.
“We’re creating relationships when we care for something. When we care for a plant, we create a relationship with that plant. When I begin to talk to people about the healing benefits of spending time in nature, they will start to open up and often say things like, ‘I love to go on walks with my dog,’ or ‘I like to sit on the porch in the evening.’ I get to reaffirm that yes, what you are doing is wonderful. Keep doing that. It’s really, really good for you,” Allen says.
Plants also mirror the facts of life back to us, showing the effects of nurture and neglect. For people suffering from depression, anxiety, or other mental disorders, plants can offer a source of connection and meaning—literally, a reason to get up in the morning.
“If you start to care for a plant, it can offer a new mindset,” Dr. Goslin-Jones says. “You plant them; you’re nurturing them; you’re excited to see their buds and their growth. Now you’re connecting with the plant life and to the physical world. You offer compassion and care to something that is giving you feedback. Plant life offers increased awareness of nature, including our inner nature.”
Nature and creativity
A deep connection between art and nature goes back to the earliest instances of human song, painting, and storytelling. Our language is bathed with the imagery of the natural world generally, and plants specifically, where love blossoms and we reap what we sow. The natural world has served as the inspiration of countless great works of art, from Monet’s water lilies to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Looking back over centuries of global art, it’s easy to see the myriad ways that plants, gardens, and nature have inspired painters, composers, and poets throughout human history.
As head of the Creativity Studies Department, Dr. Goslin-Jones is most interested in the way creativity and gardening go hand in hand. She also has firsthand experience of the creative impulse that comes from the natural world.
“Gardening has a design element of color and texture,” she says. “It’s like painting for me, painting with plants to create this visual landscape that comes together to make a beautiful whole. That leads to inspiration in other areas—that garden then inspires me to write poetry or to paint or to travel. It really inspires all parts of my life and in all seasons of my life too.”
Not only do plants inspire us to make art—making art is incredibly good for us. Studies have shown that drawing reduces cortisol levels and improves mood, and a 2018 study found that writing about stressful or traumatic events was good for both physical and psychological health. Art therapy has also been successfully used to treat eating disorders, addiction, and chronic illness.
Additionally, making art can put us in a “flow” state—a term coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to describe the experience of being “in the zone,” or the pleasurable feeling of total immersion in a task. A 2008 study on the brains of jazz musicians found that in a flow state, the self-monitoring portion of our brain is turned off, allowing for split-second decisions and essentially uninhibited creativity. Another study found that classical pianists who entered a flow state exhibited deeper breathing and a lower heart rate. Physical activities like gardening, exercising, and yoga are also lauded as ways to get into the flow.
“There’s a level of immersion, a meditative state, to gardening and being in nature,” Dr. Goslin-Jones says. “Monet is a wonderful example of this. I traveled to his gardens, and it’s almost a mystical experience. When you see his painting, he’s the ultimate example of getting inspiration from gardening. His whole life is suffused by gardening.”
The holistic benefit cycle
The positive effects of plant and human relationships connect and feed into each other—from creativity to holistic health. Gardening or spending time in nature pays physical benefits in exercise, sunshine, and fresh air.
Exercise, sunshine, and fresh air feed the mind-body connection, boosting our immune systems while also improving our moods and mental resilience. At the same time, plants and nature make us more creative and productive, setting off another string of mental and emotional benefits.
If gardening is the prescription for some of what could ail you, how much is prescribed? The truth is that even tiny doses of plants, sunshine, and fresh air can make a major difference. A 2009 study found that hospital patients with a houseplant in their rooms had lower blood pressure; less pain, anxiety, and fatigue; and more positive impressions of the employees caring for them.
Even in the sanitized stupor of hospital rooms, minor changes like a single plant or staying on the sunny side of the hospital can have positive effects.
If you’re planting a garden bed in a yard or a community garden, going for a hike, taking a walk to a green space, buying a succulent, or adding a few houseplants around a workplace or home, you are likely to receive the same restorative and inspiring benefits. In 2020, when 40% of Americans report experiencing a mental or behavioral health condition related to the coronavirus pandemic, these benefits are all the more important.
When travel, eating out, and many of the “normal” ways we socialize and relax are out of reach, buying a few houseplants to keep you company are can brighten our days and decrease the stress many of us feel. With so many unknowns surrounding us, one clear promise is the bulbs will bloom in the spring and the seeds will bear fruit again, and by witnessing these miracles, we can remain invigorated.
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