And the secret garden bloomed
and bloomed and every morning
revealed new miracles.
Frances Hodgson Burnett,
The Secret Garden (1911)
FLOURISHING IN MEADOWS, GARDENS, AND GREENSPACES
Playing with mud is fun, but my favorite way to get my Minimum Daily Dirt Requirement and connect with the earth is to dig in it. Gardens have provided a sanctuary for healing body, mind, and soul since the beginning of recorded time; some splendid examples are the imperial gardens of ancient China, the hanging gardens of Babylon, and the groves surrounding Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum. My little patch of green in Brooklyn is significantly less magnificent, but it is just as therapeutic. While digging in the earth I sort my thoughts, improve the world around me in a small yet meaningful way, and engage deeply in a few moments of active mindfulness—intentional and focused action that slows the onslaught of nagging thoughts and inner chatter.
For me, no other experience evokes and sustains what the pioneering psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defined as “flow,” a state “in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”1 It’s that experience of becoming immersed in an activity, so “lost” in it that the self falls away. When I’m in the garden I rarely notice the passage of time, and all my anxieties and to-do lists evaporate. I’m not alone in this; people who love to garden will agree that it’s a way to free the mind from stress-producing rumination through beauty and play, while getting a little physical exercise as a bonus.
Gardening is even better in a group. Community gardens or farms are a source of fresh seasonal and local produce, but, more importantly, they build, well, community. They range from allotments—land that is divided into small plots, each one leased to an individual for growing vegetables and/or flowers—to “guerrilla” gardens, where fallow or abandoned land is reclaimed and cultivated by a neighborhood for growing food and communal use. The benefits are myriad. According to Gardening Matters, an independent organization dedicated to community gardeners in Minnesota, such gardens also:
• Reduce our carbon footprint by cutting the distance that vegetables are shipped;
• Increase property values by adding green space;
• Provide employment, education, and entrepreneurship opportunities;
• Offer a supply of fresh, seasonal, nutritionally rich produce that is particularly valuable in neighborhoods that might not otherwise have access to it;
• Lower crime rates by getting people out of their homes and gathering them together in a shared enterprise;
• Provide educational and cross-cultural opportunities;
• Reduce stress and increase a sense of wellness and belonging through a shared activity, improving our state of mind.2
The association between gardening and the mind is not a new one. Ancient Egyptian physicians are said to have recommended walks in gardens, and during the Middle Ages monastery gardens were recommended as a place to treat melancholy. As the medieval healer and mystic Hildegard of Bingen put it, “With nature’s help, humankind can set into creation all that is necessary and life sustaining.”3
In recent years, gardening has come to be understood as a useful and effective treatment for disorders of the mind—autism, depression, and PTSD—and body, including coordination problems and rehabilitation after surgery. We have used this healing power intuitively for millennia, and now studies have begun to confirm it. For example, after performing a stressful task, test subjects in a study undertaken in the Netherlands were randomly assigned half an hour of either gardening outdoors or reading indoors.4 The researchers measured levels of cortisol (the stress hormone), and the participants kept track of their moods. It was found that both gardening and reading lowered cortisol during recovery from stress, but the decrease was significantly greater among the gardening group, who manifested better moods than the reading group. I’m sure most gardeners would agree that time spent turning compost, cutting back raspberry bushes, and tending tomatoes can provide relief from even the most acute stress. (Although that doesn’t mean one should always opt for the garden over a good book!)
Two long-term (sixteen-year) studies of people in their sixties and seventies who gardened regularly found that the gardeners had a 36–47% lower risk of dementia than non-gardeners, even when other variables were taken into account.5 Other studies have found that people diagnosed with depression, mood swings, or bipolar disorder who spent six hours a week tending flowers and vegetables showed a quantifiable improvement after three months.6 What’s especially interesting is that they continued to improve even after the program ended, showing that some rewiring may have occurred during the process.
Japanese researchers have found that simply looking at a garden has advantages.7 They arranged for subjects (women whose average age was in their mid-forties) to sit in chairs and do nothing but appreciate the view of a kiwifruit garden for ten minutes. Compared with the control group, which had a view of buildings, the women who looked at the kiwis showed a significant increase in parasympathetic (“rest and digest,” as opposed to “fight or flight”) activity and a decrease in heart rate, and reported feeling more relaxed and at ease. There are many implications to all this research, but one small one is that it may be helpful to take a periodic gardening break whenever possible.
Therapeutic gardens
A practical application has sprung up from these studies: horticultural therapy. Sometimes called ecotherapy, it is any kind of green activity that has an impact on mental health. This can include the occupational therapy aspect of working in a garden and experiencing the sequence of planting, tending, and harvesting, but it might also be a practice of integrating the senses by encountering tactility (furry pussy willows or fuzzy silver sage, for example) or fragrance. It takes place most often in a specially designed garden, but it can occur anywhere that participants interact with nature. Studies have shown that therapeutic gardens have a positive impact on memory, problem-solving, and social and language abilities.8 The physical act of gardening can rehabilitate and strengthen muscles and restore or improve endurance, balance, and coordination. Horticultural therapy in a vocational setting teaches participants both how to work independently and how to follow directions.
School gardens
Educational gardens are also gaining popularity in schools all over the world, and their learning possibilities range from ecology and earth science to cooperation and problem-solving. In Ripe for Change: Garden-Based Learning in Schools (2015), Jane S. Hirschi explains that teachers tend to find that school gardens are an especially engaging learning environment for pupils. They can use the time they spend in the garden to explore several subjects—not just botany, but even areas such as geometry, when considering the structure of plants and their growth patterns, fostering multidisciplinary learning. Edible learning gardens also allow teachers to get nutrition and food education into the curriculum without diminishing the time they spend on core academic subjects: “The schoolyard garden is a sensory-rich change in environment from the classroom, and it is just outside the door.”9
The value of gardens for children doesn’t end with the school day. A recent study using MRI to gauge working memory and inattentiveness, conducted on 253 children by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, found a correlation between the greenness of a neighborhood and the development of both white and gray brain matter, affecting both memory and attention. The report explained that this supported the “biophilia” hypothesis—that evolution has wired humans to seek out a connection with nature (see page 6)—and recommended green spaces to provide children with places for activity and rest, and opportunities for discovery, problem-solving, and learning, so as to have a positive impact on their brain development. The institute went on to report that greener areas tend to have less air and noise pollution, and that breathing healthy air containing “good” microbes could also have indirect benefits for the development of the brain.10
Open spaces
In her lovely book Zen of the Plains: Experiencing Wild Western Places (2014), Tyra A. Olstad writes an ode to “windswept ridges and wind-rent skies.” She describes our tendency to dismiss wide-open spaces as empty, meaningless, and blank—devoid of the complexity of ocean or woods, for example. Setting out to understand these easily overlooked areas and to learn the power of their open-ended potential, she found meaning in the “simple sweep of the horizon; the rich color of the air.” She concludes the book with “a brief meditation on expectation and emptiness,” picturing a snowfall:
Then there is space … Not emptiness, nor a lack of things, much less a memory of what was once there and desire for what could be. No, in that space, there’s a rich possibility, an anything, an everything.11
The brain responds positively to open space—meadows of wild flowers, deserts that (at least from a distance) seem empty of everything but sand and light—and that can be metaphorical as well as literal. Think of the potential and excitement of a fresh notebook or a blank canvas. We’ve all experienced the rewards of a simple pause, a rest from stimulation. Despite what we might have been told as children, staring into “empty” space and daydreaming might in fact be time well spent.
We can’t all get to a farm or meadow, but even spending time in limited urban green space can have a positive effect. City-dwellers breathe in a lot of polluted air from cars and industry, filled with heavy metals such as arsenic and lead, and it creates inflammation, which harms the lungs and heart. Studies have shown that we can counter this and improve our lung tissue with a walk someplace green—a nearby park, your own backyard, the courtyard of your apartment complex, or a cul-de-sac …
Being in a meadow, field, or any other open space brings many benefits, even if it’s only perceived as an open space. The Construction Industry Research and Information Association (CIRIA), an advocate for green spaces in urban settings, supports what we learned from Ulrich in Chapter 1, that views of or access to green spaces can improve and hasten recovery from illness or surgery and lessen the need for medication. CIRIA goes on to say that research has shown that people who live near open spaces with some element of green “seem to be more effective in managing major life issues, coping with poverty, and performing better in cognitive tasks.”12
Even walking through the city to a park or green area has been shown to calm our minds. In 2017, using EEGs, self-reported measures, and interviews, researchers at the universities of York and Edinburgh showed that, among the elderly, “Walking between busy urban environments and green spaces triggers changes in levels of excitement, engagement and frustration in the brain.”13
Foraging
For those of us who do have access to the countryside, there is another kind of healing to be found where things grow wild. As Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote in Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2014), “Plants know how to make food and medicine from light and water, and then they give it away.”14 Foraging—not just in rural areas, but even in city parks—is becoming more popular, and is a way to be somewhere green and do some marketing for “free.” Berries are a great example. According to the Irish botanist and medical biochemist (and personal hero of mine!) Diana Beresford-Kroeger, wild lingonberries, blackberries, elderberries, cloudberries, raspberries, and other small fruit carry “an extraordinary biochemical reward” called ellagic acid, which creates a filter that reduces the “mutagenicity” of toxins entering our cells.15 This matters because mutagens are chemical or physical agents capable of causing genetic alterations or mutations and damaging DNA, leading to cancer and other illnesses.
Beyond berries, knowledgeable foragers can collect mushrooms, wild carrots, fern fiddleheads, and herbs such as wild mint and sage. They can even gather seaweed as we’ll see in Chapter 8! My neighborhood still has remnants of the harvestable kitchen gardens that were there many years ago: an apple tree, a pear tree, a fig tree, plenty of mulberry trees, and some grapevines.
There are a couple of caveats, of course. First of all, know what you’re putting into your mouth, especially when it comes to mushrooms, which can be highly poisonous. The best way to begin foraging is with someone who knows what they’re doing. It may be a friend who has been living off their land for a long time, or someone who has dedicated themselves to studying the local flora. Look online for details of local foraging walks or groups. Second, consider the soil the plants are growing in, and make sure they haven’t been exposed to toxic or bacterialaden man- or animal-made substances.
FOUR WAYS TO BRING THE GARDEN INTO YOUR HOME
Sometimes you can get outside to nature, but a way to bring a little bit of nature to you is by growing some easy things. Those glimmers of green in pots on the windowsill boost our mood, and they can be nourishing, too. Here are some examples:
• I always have a few scallions or spring onions sprouting, I always have a few scallions or spring onions sprouting, and I use them all the time. They’re really simple to cultivate. When you bring the onions home from the market, save the white root of two or three and put them in a glass with just enough water to cover the bulb. Leave them on a sunny windowsill and be sure to change the water every day or so, or it will become kind of funky. Then, when you need a little bit to flavor a salad or sauce, trim some off. You’ll always have something fresh and green to eat, no matter the season. If you wish, plant the bulbs in your garden in spring, and they’ll spread.
• Once you start experimenting with things in glasses and jars on the windowsill, you’ll delight in what you can grow. I’ve always been a failure at rooting avocado pits, but when my son was small he loved it when we were able to start a pineapple plant by cutting the crown from the fruit, drying the stalk, and rooting it in sandy soil. It took a few months, but we actually harvested a tiny pineapple! This is a lovely way to have a little bit of Hawaii on your kitchen counter in January.
• I discovered this one by accident when I was cutting back a mulberry tree in spring before the berries started dropping onto the roof. The leafy stems were so lively and fresh that I rinsed them and put them in a vase. It had never occurred to me before to do this with flower-free cuttings, but now I do it all the time. The breath of green freshness without a corresponding plant to tend is always pleasing.
• It was also in spring that I brought home my first batch of herbs from the farmers’ market. I had dill, sage, basil, and mint, and couldn’t use them all at once. I’d read that herbs keep better in water than packed up and refrigerated, so I cleaned and trimmed them and put them in four matching glasses. I had sage that lasted almost a month this way. The effect and the fragrance were lovely, and no basil wilted or grew slimy in the back of the crisper. (Warning: my cats seem fascinated by dill and couldn’t leave it alone, so I had to put it in an inaccessible spot!)
