It is so easy to view gardening as a chore or another thing to tick off the to-do list. In this article I'm sharing some of the reasons why gardening is so good for your mental health and position it as the way to lower your stress levels, release some of the pressure you are under and avoid burnout.

1. Gardening lowers your stress levels

The reason gardening and horticultural therapy specifically is so good for lowering your stress levels is because it helps you complete the stress cycle.

Every day stressful things happen and most of us shove them deep down inside, carry on with our day and try and forget about them. But no matter how much you try, that stress sits festering inside of you and raises your stress levels.

Getting out in your garden, and practicing some horticultural therapy exercises even for 20 minutes can help complete the stress cycle and get the day’s stresses out of your system.

2. Helps quiet your mind

Whether you have a neurodivergent brain like me or you are just juggling a lot, it can feel like you’re drowning in the noise.

Daily time in your garden helps you to turn the dial down on the noise in your head and give you some much needed peace and quiet.

The repetitive actions of gardening help you to quickly get into the flow state where your brain can find some silence.

3. You create a beautiful space that holds you

As women we are under so much pressure juggling all the things. We’re often caring for kids or elderly parents, working to pay the bills, trying to cook and eat nutritious food, get your 2L of water in each day, move your body to get strong AND carve out just a little bit of time for you every day.

It’s exhausting and it’s time to create a space that holds you so you don’t have to hold it all alone anymore.

Your garden gets to be your sanctuary.

And the best bit is that because it’s right on your doorstep you don’t need to book into a yoga class or a therapy session to feel held, you can access it whenever you need to.

4. Helps you grow your self worth

Whether you’ve been knocked by redundancy, the constant judgement from others in motherhood, divorce or separation, workplace bullying or just life, your self worth takes a battering.

Growing beautiful flowers to bring you joy and delicious food to feed yourself and your family will help you improve your self worth, self confidence and begin to trust in yourself and your abilities again.

If you are ending the day feeling tired but wired, like nothing is going right and with a head that feels like it's about to explode, first know that you are not alone and secondly know that horticultural therapy can help you.

The way to think about your garden is not another thing to beat yourself up over because you haven't ‘sorted it out’ but that it gets to be your therapy space, a place where you can finally exhale and let all of the stresses of the day out into the soil.

Kendall Marie Platt is a Horticultural therapist & space holder for garden curious women. She is the founder of Adventures with Flowers and supports women to get gardening as the antidote to burnout as they create garden sanctuaries that hold them. Kendall brings together horticultural therapy and sensory-led garden design to create spaces that don’t just look beautiful, they restore you daily. It’s beauty that heals, rhythm that restores and design that supports your body and mind. She does this through her 1:1 horticultural therapy support programme and her membership, the Seed. She also hosts regular garden-along sessions to help attendees quiet their minds in their garden.

Kendall is a writer, speaker and facilitator who has spoken at events and for organisations on the topic of using horticultural therapy to reduce stress and avoid burnout as well as hosting hands-on horticultural therapy workshops in corporate and event settings.

*Kendall Marie Platt during the heiter “Homecoming in Winter” event in London last year. Image by Özge of @lens.and.she*

We wanted to get to know Kendall and her work a bit better. This is why we sat down with her for a little interview. Our conversation is now ready for you to read here:

heiter: Can you take us back to the beginning of your gardening journey? What first drew you to working with nature, and how did it evolve into the work you do today?

Kendall: I started gardening because I had a garden that needed doing. It was during a very stressful time of my life but I didn't view it as something that would help me, I just saw it as another thing on the to-do list. But once I started gardening, I realised it was the first time in my life that my brain had been quiet. The noise had been turned down on my inner (often very negative) narrative. It was heaven.

I knew there must be other women out there who felt the same as I did and that gardening could help them, so I started running workshops and then eventually added 1:1 horticultural therapy work and an online membership.

heiter: Your work beautifully connects gardening with emotional wellbeing. For someone who might be struggling with their mental health, how can being in the garden support them in a gentle and accessible way?

Kendall: Sometimes it isn't even about doing anything in the garden. Simply sitting with the sun on your face and noticing the growth happening around you can connect you with a sense of hope and joy. We are often so busy that we don’t have the time to stop and notice. Often once we stop, difficult emotions can come up for us and I teach my clients horticultural therapy activities to help them process those emotions so that they can move forward.

heiter: For those who feel overwhelmed, exhausted, or unsure where to begin, what’s a simple first step they can take to start gardening without it feeling like another thing on their to-do list?

Kendall: Create yourself some gorgeous pots to sit either side of your front door. They will raise your mood and boost your energy every time you come in or out of the front door. Starting with one small project first and showing yourself that you can do this gardening thing will give you a big dopamine hit and allow you to grow your confidence. Be really present while you’re gardening and soon your brain will come to view gardening as an enjoyable pastime rather than a chore.

heiter: At heiter, we often talk about finding small moments of joy in everyday life. What does a mindful moment in your garden look like for you, and how can others begin to create that for themselves?

Kendall: I love checking my seedlings. Really being present and engaging my sense of sight as I look for those little green shoots. Buy yourself some pots, compost and a packet of seeds, cosmos are a really pretty, easy to grow flower, and sow some seeds for yourself. Engage your senses as you check in on them daily while you’re waiting for the kettle to boil. Plunge your finger into the soil to see if they need water (if it feels wet they don’t, if it feels dry they do) and very quickly you will start to see the seedlings emerging.

heiter: For readers who feel drawn to your approach, how can they work with you, and what kind of transformation or feeling do you hope they walk away with?

Kendall: I work with people online offering both 1:1 horticultural therapy support and group support through my horticultural therapy membership. After we’ve finished working together they will have a garden sanctuary that holds them through life's ups and downs so that they don’t have to hold it all alone. They’ll feel calmer, more confident, and have more energy because they’ll be taking 20 minutes in the garden for themselves every day.

As summer progresses, we may start to notice that the vibrant colours from the flowers in our gardens slowly begin to diminish.

In August we can see that most of the blooms start to look a bit tired, and some simply fade and disappear. This is a natural process. Gardens, exhausted after producing colourful delights of flowers, begin to look a bit quieter. Now the patterns and shapes of foliage start to become more visible and pronounced.

Even though our gardens look more subdued, there are still a number of tasks to be carried out in summer that could elevate their look:

If you want to extend the colour display in your summer garden, it is important to stay on top of the deadheading the spent blooms. Plants, like for example roses, when deadheaded regularly, will reward you with a new display of flowers. It is worth noting, that if you have a variety of rose that makes attractive rose hips, then leave the old flowers on the rose, so it has time to develop into a fruit. Red or orange rose hips will make your garden look more attractive during winter months.

Herbaceous perennials can be cut back in summer so they produce fresh, healthy foliage. This practice will not only improve the overall look of your summer garden, making it a bit tidier, but will also encourage the plants to generate another display of flowers.

During prolonged dry spells, you might need to water your garden. The best time to water is in the evening or very early in the morning, before the sun comes out and the heat increases. Remember to water your plants directly into the soil around the plant base, not on the foliage, to avoid sun burn.

When it rains, make sure you have some buckets placed around your garden to collect and store rainwater, as it is a precious resource.

Also, you might want to consider adding more drought tolerant plants into your garden, reducing the need for constant watering. Some of the drought tolerant plants that will grow well in a sunny garden border are: Santolina, Phlomis, Artemisia, Nepeta, and lavender. Consider herbs like thyme, rosemary or salvia, which will fill your garden with warm, southern scents.

Weeding is one of those tasks in a garden that needs to be done on a regular basis, especially when the weather is warm and humid. If you would like to limit the time spent in your garden weeding, have a look at the density of plants in your garden. If there are big gaps between individual plants, add more plants to create a higher density of planting, this approach limits the chance for weeds to grow.

With some gentle gardening a late summer garden can be renewed and boosted with life and colour.

“…seeing green leaves makes us calmer, happier, more focused and more creative.”

Gardening is one of those activities that greatly benefits not only our physical health, as it requires our bodies to lift, squat and stretch multiple times. It also has a very positive impact on our mental well-being. Simply put, gardening is a great activity for both our bodies and souls.

In her book, Good Nature: The New Science of How Nature Improves Our Health, Kathy Willis points us to a number of studies showcasing the impact plants and in particular colour green has on our well-being. There is mounting evidence that just seeing green leaves makes us calmer, happier, more focused and more creative.

Moreover, gardening teaches us to be more attuned with nature and its cycles, through listening, observing, touching and smelling. As the seasons change, we gain knowledge on the complexities of life and its processes. And to experience all of this we don’t have to live in a cabin in the woods for two years, like David Thoreau, a well-known naturalist and philosopher, we can simply use gardening as our way of connecting with nature and to reflect.

With time spent gardening we build our confidence. We are not afraid that we will do something wrong – we learn with enthusiasm and correct our mistakes as we progress. We become a patient witness to the changes in our garden, which becomes our teacher that guides us gently as we move through the seasons.

Even though there are numerous tasks still to be performed in our gardens this summer, we should never forget how good it is for our “Heiterkeit”.

Kornelia Pawlukowska-Dible, the founder of Hastate Design, has a background in history, art curation and illustration. Her love of learning led her to study horticulture at the SRUC in Edinburgh, where she developed a keen interest in planting design. Kornelia discovered that planting design is a great medium to express herartistic side as well as allowing for constant learning and knowledge development. This encouraged her to create Hastate Design, a planting design business with strong ethos and design principles.

Images by Andrea Marvan, @mondegreen_studio, www.mondegreen.ca

4 reasons to love gardening for your mental health

We wanted to get to know Kendall and her work a bit better. This is why we sat down with her for a little interview. Our conversation is now ready for you to read here:

How to look after your garden in late summer, and how it benefits your well-being too!

“…seeing green leaves makes us calmer, happier, more focused and more creative.”