Strengthening the immune system, reducing stress, losing calories… The positive effects of gardening on health

Many studies highlight the mental and physical health benefits of gardening. It is not necessary to have a garden, planting flowers on a balcony already allows you to obtain certain benefits.

This weekend of June 1st and 2nd will be that of “Rendez-vous au jardins”. Like every year, at this time, several thousand parks and gardens will open their doors to the public in France. Gardening is good for your health and notably strengthens our immune system.

Putting your hands in the soil of a garden, or even planting flowers on a balcony, using potting soil stimulates the diversity of bacteria present on the skin and increases the level of anti-inflammatory cytokines in the blood. Finnish researchers from the University of Helsinki recently demonstrated this. The effect is felt very quickly, after a month, even if, for example, you garden while staying indoors because it is raining.

This is not the only positive effect of gardening on health. Numerous studies have shown other benefits for mental and physical health. We can cite a study from the University of Colorado, published in the Lancet. Researchers asked a group of 150 initially non-gardening adults
and aged 41 on average to go, two to three times a week, to a shared vegetable garden in their neighborhood to learn the basics of gardening. As a result, after a year, the group of gardeners increased their physical activity by almost an hour per week, consuming more vegetables and 7% more fiber per day. All these factors reduce vulnerability to the risks of diabetes and cancer. These gardeners also had reduced markers of stress and anxiety, compared to an identical control group of 150 adults, who did not garden.

Research from the University of Washington shows that children who learned to grow and harvest vegetables in a vegetable garden in elementary school eat more fresh fruits and vegetables 10 to 15 years later and that they are more confident in their food choices as adults.

At any age, gardening allows you to have a better image of your body, indicates the work of London researchers. It must be said that gardening is sport: two and a half hours of digging, weeding, planting, cutting branches allows you to lose as many calories as in an hour of jogging at 10 km/h.