Why is gardening good for you?

Lehberger and Sparke’s work confirms that gardening is good for our mental health.  They “replicated a study conducted in 2020 in Germany, which focused on comparing garden owners and non-garden owners. Almost exactly one year after the original study in 2020, we collected matched data from . . . people living in Germany in 2021. We again found that garden owners had significantly greater life satisfaction and better mental well-being than non-garden owners. . . . garden owners spent substantially more time in their garden than non-garden owners spent in public green spaces. . . .  By pooling the data from 2020 to 2021, our . . .  analyses supported the main conclusion from the original study, i.e., garden owners’ greater life satisfaction and better mental well-being were attributable to the differences between the groups in sociodemographic factors (e.g., higher income), time spent outside (e.g., longer hours), and personality traits (e.g., less neuroticism).”

Mira Lehberger and Kai Sparke.  “How Important Are Home Gardens and Spending Time Outside for Well-Being During the COVID-19 Pandemic?  Comparing and Combining Data from 2020 to 2021.”  Journal of Environmental Psychology, in press, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102089