Why a garden is more relaxing than any meditation class

Outdoors
Why a garden is more relaxing than any meditation class

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Fortunately, a little bit of earth, a rake and reasonably good weather are enough: if you have a garden, you don’t need any yoga or mindfulness exercises, our author believes.

by Viola Kaiser

One thing in the world makes me really happy: mowing the lawn! Just the scent. And then you can see immediately what you have done while you are mowing. Even as a child, I thought that was great when I helped my father. As an eight-year-old I also enjoyed digging in the ground, burying potatoes and harvesting carrots and radishes. My parents had given me a small bed on the wall of the house that I could do whatever I wanted with.

After that I lived in booths in the middle of the city and didn’t even have a balcony. When I finally got one, I quickly realized that I had missed plants – and that those four square meters just couldn’t be everything.

All of a sudden I wanted my children to have a garden so that they can dig in potatoes like I used to and see that more potatoes are made out of them. I wanted them to be able to pick tomatoes straight from the bush and be happy about it.

The garden calms me down

So we moved. Now we have a very old tree, a somewhat puny hedge and a nest box for birds. We have tomatoes, a few flowers and a lemon tree in the pot. I love this very small, but absolutely fine garden for me.

In autumn we have a lot of leaves. All over. I briefly considered whether it annoys me very much to rake up these huge piles every day or to water every evening in the summer. Then I noticed that it relaxes me. Like mowing the lawn, it is simple, it has a goal, it makes sense. For me this is better than any yoga exercise or meditation. Even if it has the same result, it calms me down and leaves me satisfied.

Gardening reduces stress, according to the study

I am not the only one who thinks gardening is great. In a study by the market research institute Norstat on behalf of the manufacturer Fiskars, 69 percent of respondents in Germany stated that gardening reduced stress and nervousness. On the pages of the TKK health insurance company, reasons are given why gardening is so healthy. It strengthens the heart, muscles, and senses and brings us home-grown fruit and vegetables.

The garden can do something that I can never do anywhere else: I just can’t do anything there. Sometimes I just sit there and really don’t do anything for minutes. I can say one thing for sure: since I have had the garden, my life has been more beautiful. For example, I could watch the squirrel for hours. In fact, that’s a lot more interesting than bingeing a series. It’s also more relaxing. Just the sight of my blooming clematis makes me really happy – and I don’t care if that sounds like I’m quirky, 75 and always wearing a straw hat.

He gave me the habit of perfectionism

Plus, this piece of nature taught me a lesson: it forced me not to be perfectionist. At first I had a very clear idea of ​​what I wanted to plant and where. But the garden had other plans for me. First snails ate everything from me, then I found that there was too much shade in the corner where I had planted and that I had lost half of all the bushes. I started all over again, bought new plants, collected snails from the beds in the evenings, cut off the leaves that had been eaten away. Sometimes I forgot what time it was and at some point my husband called from inside where I was actually staying. Then I completely forgot that I still wanted to wash or watch TV or write a text.

I could never have done that with a meditation course alone.

Barbara