Given the author's observations, I would draw a different conclusion. I would conclude it isn't so much that gardens are good for you but that urban living, surrounding yourself with noise, strangers, glass, and concrete is bad for you.
The Healing Power of Gardens
51–60 of 115 posts
Re: The Healing Power of Gardens
#52I've had a theory for some time now based on my own observations: A big part of why nature is so calming is the absence of repeating patterns. In our artificial life everything follows standardized forms and patterns. It's a sterile world. The most obvious example being rectangles and perfect 90 degree angles everywhere. But I would also count things like uniform colors, evenly spread (artificial) light, predictable…
Sort of off topic:
One of the more frustrating things about going out in nature where I live at least, is seeing the pattern of invasive plants over and over again. I can identify every plant in my area, an area that would have been full of thousands of different trees and bushes now has repeating landscape of about two dozen different plants.
Re: The Healing Power of Gardens
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
> putting food on a plate that came from your yard, from your care. Can't second this enough. This connection between soil (direct environment) to your gut is, as stupid as it seems, a marvellous thing.[1] > There's something about sitting in a green (or red, or blue, or yellow, etc.) space that you made. Few time I walk in a forest (semi-wild) I feel like a forest is like a big nest. Enough roof, enough sunlight, en…
> there are times where your spidey senses will wake up though, which is also super surprising because it's not like fear or stress. It's N times more acute senses and focus. Almost a pleasure.. especially considering how dull a modern daily life can make you feel. After about 3 weeks into a multi thousand mile hike, senses that I didn't even realize I had started to wake up. I could sense animals in the woods around…
Makes me want to walk in the country side alone. In France there's almost no real danger (except the eventual hunter).
Anyways it's odd how our world evolved toward comfort and disconnecting us from such important part of us.
Re: The Healing Power of Gardens
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> putting food on a plate that came from your yard, from your care. Can't second this enough. This connection between soil (direct environment) to your gut is, as stupid as it seems, a marvellous thing.[1] > There's something about sitting in a green (or red, or blue, or yellow, etc.) space that you made. Few time I walk in a forest (semi-wild) I feel like a forest is like a big nest. Enough roof, enough sunlight, en…
> there are times where your spidey senses will wake up though, which is also super surprising because it's not like fear or stress. It's N times more acute senses and focus. Almost a pleasure.. especially considering how dull a modern daily life can make you feel. After about 3 weeks into a multi thousand mile hike, senses that I didn't even realize I had started to wake up. I could sense animals in the woods around…
You must have come across some very delicate mushrooms while making your way.
Re: The Healing Power of Gardens
#55This article focuses a lot on large, well curated gardens, but I'm an engineer who found a lot of solace and safety in managing my own garden. (As someone who has faced burnout and anxiety from work before.) There's something about planning, planting, and then caring for a garden that appeals to my engineer brain. It's an exercise in organization and planning that scales from "throw seeds at dirt" to "these plants wi…
You're getting it twice there, because repetitive tasks can have their own soothing effect, especially on people whose minds tend to 'race'.
Weeding, pruning, harvesting become a meditation, after a fashion. That's probably what Grandpa was doing out there futzing with the lawn every weekend. I never got that knack with lawncare, but flowerbeds, sure.
Re: The Healing Power of Gardens
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd guess that you would love permaculture [1], if you're not already familiar with it. It's a set of design principles for organizing and planning gardens that oozes a certain creative engineering and wisdom of natural things. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture
Yep! I try to practice permaculture as much as possible. There's always more to do, but much of our garden is designed to be both aesthetically pleasing and edible, and we try to recycle back into it and support native insects where we can.
The big secret with permaculture that I wish wasn't a secret: There's more things you can do, but there are fewer things you have to do right now. If you're home and it's sunny, you're mowing the lawn, and you can't stop in the middle.
If you wanna prune shrubs, chop and drop weeds, or plant bushes until the sun sets, it starts raining, or GoT comes on, you just can. Doing lawncare with thunderclouds passing overhead is just bad juju.
Re: The Healing Power of Gardens
#57I've had a theory for some time now based on my own observations: A big part of why nature is so calming is the absence of repeating patterns. In our artificial life everything follows standardized forms and patterns. It's a sterile world. The most obvious example being rectangles and perfect 90 degree angles everywhere. But I would also count things like uniform colors, evenly spread (artificial) light, predictable…
You might be interested in looking at and reading parts of The Grammar of Ornament. In particular some of the “principles” he spells out. I’ll link that page below.
“True beauty results from that repose which the mind feels when the eye, the intellect, and the affections, are satisfied from the absence of any want.”
https://archive.org/details/grammarornament00Jone/page/n13
The book’s evaluation of leaves and nature at the end is also relevant.
Re: The Healing Power of Gardens
#58This article focuses a lot on large, well curated gardens, but I'm an engineer who found a lot of solace and safety in managing my own garden. (As someone who has faced burnout and anxiety from work before.) There's something about planning, planting, and then caring for a garden that appeals to my engineer brain. It's an exercise in organization and planning that scales from "throw seeds at dirt" to "these plants wi…
I love the uncertainty of it. There are so many things that can go wrong - weather, pests, misunderstanding a plants needs. Too many factors out of your control. At the end of the day you have to accept that nature will take its own course and appreciate it.
...beavers. I've lost two trees to beavers.
I hope the jerks enjoyed it.
Re: The Healing Power of Gardens
#59Gardens and other natural spaces absolutely affect social and mental wellbeing.
An interesting piece of research into the effects of greenery and nature on wellbeing was conducted back in 2001 by Ming Kuo and William Sullivan [0]. I love referencing it in discussions like these as it's a rather opportunistic experimental setting that might have otherwise never occurred, and gives us some pretty great data to recount when we only otherwise have anecdotes.
In Chicago there was a set of high-rise public-housing buildings. The residents of these buildings had been assigned randomly by the public housing system. Attrition over time had left some buildings surrounded by only concrete and asphalt and others with pockets of green. Kuo and Sullivan were able to compare levels of aggression of 145 residents. They found higher levels of aggression and familial conflict recalled by those living less close to nature. They backed up this data by looking at similar low-rise developments [1]. Controlling for other factors, they compared crime rates of inhabitants who experienced less natural proximity to those with more. They found that roughly 7% of the variation in crime that couldn't be accounted for by other factors could be accounted for by the amount of trees.
Ming Kuo has gone on to research the link between nature and school performance, one of her recent studies concluding that "greening has the potential to mitigate academic underachievement in high-poverty urban schools."[2] In another fascinating piece of research she has also found that "Children with ADHD have fewer symptoms after outdoor activities in lush environments."[3]
Many of this research matches our collective anecdotes. We know that we are somehow hard-wired for nature. Yet we keep ourselves locked away in buildings for hours on end with little of it except corporate potted plants (often fake) and the odd photo or poster on the wall. To pile on with another opinion... I think there's something about 'wild' greenery that is distinctly effective versus manicured greenery. Its chaos and growth somehow synchronise with the minds' inherent nature. In an incredibly fundamental way, we are supposed to be amongst that wildness.
[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/245234610_Aggressio...
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249624302_Environme...
[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327876862_Might_Sch...
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23192434_Children_W...
Re: The Healing Power of Gardens
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have had good luck in the battle against aphids on my kale by spraying them with a (1:1) mixture of 70% rubbing alcohol and water with a small amount of dish soap (I use about one sponge load worth in a full spray bottle).
I have a similar recipe, only I add in a tablespoon or so of neem oil.
Neem is great. We use it a lot in India. It's one of what some people informally call super-plants or wonder-plants, some others being banana, coconut, and bamboo. All have various uses, for different parts of the plant, not just the obvious ones, e.g. in the case of banana, people in India eat the flowers and stems too, made into curries).
Edit: Also garlic, ha ha. What would we do without it, for both food and (informal) medical uses.