Idly channel-hopping this week I seemed to have the choice of either watching gardening programmes or seeing people trying to buy the house of their dreams for the price of a pint. In the end I went back to watching ‘Where Eagles Dare’ on DVD for the hundredth time but was amused by the notion that gardening is either the new rock and roll or the new sex – phrases often used at the launch of yet another media gardening blitz, or another round of gardening makeovers. (Why is it that no-one ever volunteers to do mine?) Well I’m sorry, but it isn’t. Sex is the new sex and always will be, but gardening may push it a close second in terms of health benefits and I often recommend it as a form of regular exercise to patients. Let me explain why.

It has long been proved by innumerable studies that physical exercise taken on a regular basis reduces your risk of heart disease, early death, stroke, depression, cancer of the large bowel, diabetes and high blood pressure to name but a few. So far so good, but gardening combines cardiovascular exercise with flexibility, endurance and muscular strength – think of all the stretching you do and combine it with the hard slog of digging and you will get the picture. These benefits are often obtained in a far more enjoyable manner than by pounding away on a treadmill for hours on end – and paying for the privilege – and need not be confined to the body either. The mental benefits are obvious too, to the extent that treatment now exists called horticultural therapy, using the therapeutic help obtained from fresh air, sunshine (when we get it) and simply being outdoors and concentrating on things other than our problems. The act of sitting and looking at trees, plants and flowers has been shown to lower blood pressure, reduce muscle tension and improve well-being by lowering stress levels. Luckily for me, you don’t even need to be good at it to benefit – what more do you need?
As a general rule I do seem to find time and again that patients of mine who spend regular time in their gardens find life more satisfying, have a well-balanced view on life and feel that they have a positive outlook to what they do compared to those who do not. I have believed this to be true for many years and so it is always nice to then have your hunch backed up by some science. According to the Canadian Horticultural Therapy Association, people working in offices without plants were 12% less productive and more stressed than those in plant-filled work areas. More surprisingly, a study of people with Alzheimer’s disease found that if they lived in homes with gardens, the rate of violent incidents reduced by nearly a fifth over two years. In the same period, at non-garden residences this rate increased by two thirds. This is a good example of health benefits accruing from something that will not be found in any medical textbook but which experience shows to be consistently the case (even allowing for the odd sprain and pulled back muscle).
There is one further Henderson health benefit to be gained at the end of a good day’s gardening – the long hot bath with a long cold beer. I ruminate at such times on words spoken by the great British philosopher Bertrand Russell. A friend of his once found him deep in profound thought and asked him why he was so contemplative. Russell replied ‘I think I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to colleagues I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite’. With a mind such as his, I’m not going to argue with that.