Gardens and Emotional Well-being .. AT MY ROSE GARDEN

In this week of mental health awareness in Australia, the link between the natural environment and human health is worth perusing.  Our culture's broadening disconnect between green spaces in its many forms and our lifestyles is, in my opinion, a cause for concern.

Previously, certainly in my living memory, gardens were every-day spaces in which children played on sometimes green lawns, climbed trees and hid among shrubs, peeping out at the world beyond.  And time stood still for many a child transfixed by the sights, smells and sounds of the garden; a butterfly landing on a brightly coloured flower, burying a curious nose in the centre of a flower to sniff its perfume and strip petals one at a time from its calyx.  

How is it that we've lost the joy of interacting with the natural world as part of our every-day ordinariness? Gardens, if they are noticed at all, are now places to be rushed past on our busy way to somewhere else, glimpsed briefly through partitions of glass as we whiz by in our mechanised worlds.  

Or perhaps a garden is only seen as a place for structured learning; growing vegetables and learning about the importance of preserving our environment.  Important as these are, a garden as a place for serendipitous discovery or 'just being' is too often relegated to the time-zones of the retired, or the ill and infirm. 

Could it be that what science is now telling us about the benefits of gardens for human well-being is just now catching up with wisdom of old?  In 1918, the Melbournian E.W.Cole ponders in the 'Happifying Gardening Hobby' that "when lonely we find solace and almost a species of companionship in our flowers ..".  

Research has shown us that having a connection with the natural world facilitates a sense of peace and helps to regulate emotional cognition (as in Attention Restoration Theory by Kaplan and Kaplan et al).  And beneficial biological responses to various perfumes of the garden in aromatherapy and the like are  more readily recognised, supporting  the long-held notion of taking time to 'stop and smell the roses'.  

Gardens are not proposed here as  a stand-alone cure, but as part of the mix of therapies that may support human well-being.  And if gardens were viewed as an every-day part of our 'doing and being' lives, places for play and reflection, perhaps we'd build resilience against times of mental ill-health.  

Again, in the words of E.W. Cole, "A child who likes flowers and is brought up in a home with a flower-garden .. will always remember it as long as he or she lives (as) .. a pleasant home."  Simplistic maybe, but certainly something to reflect upon ..