The healthy gardener

Gardeners can be a smug lot. Not only do they derive great satisfaction (mostly) from doing what they do but also they know just how good it is for them to do it (mostly). The media regularly reports on the beneficial impact gardening can have as a form of exercise, particularly for the elderly, and often promotes the therapeutic value of gardening (as a stress reliever, for people recovering from physical or mental trauma or for people suffering from dementia for instance). These are significant and worthwhile considerations but I wonder whether they are mainly preaching to the converted. If gardening is not something that appeals to you, it can seem like something best left to the old, the sick or the mildly obsessed. Let someone else do the gardening while you enjoy a drink on the terrace, and indeed there is nothing wrong with that.

Anecdotal evidence abounds. Talk of complexions glowing from exposure and cobwebs vanquished with a hearty bout of digging, not to mention the mental satisfaction of seeing the bulbs you planted on a chilly November day rise to become a brilliant display. But these days data is king, and queen, and anecdotes don’t cut the mustard. While there is of course plenty of research to support the benefits of gardening, more precise and perhaps more exciting research is always an advantage when trying to convince a report weary public. And so to the biomechanics department of an English university where researchers are more used to assessing the skeletal and muscular stresses and strains exerted on the bodies of ballerinas and fast bowlers. The RHS has teamed up with Coventry University to assess gardeners in the same way and thereby throw more definitive light on the physical implications of doing a bit digging, weeding and the like. The results will be interesting I’m sure.

However is it possibly in the arena of germ warfare that gardening holds the greatest potential weapon, particularly if you start young. I am not sure whether there is scientific research specifically linking gardening with healthy immune systems but there is a growing consensus that our lack of exposure to bacteria in an over clean modern world has something to do with the increasing levels of asthma, allergies and autoimmune diseases. Amish children, raised mainly on farms, suffer far less from these conditions than other American children. And a Finnish study in 2012 showed that plant diversity outside was linked to the level of exposure to bacteria inside and that children exposed to the greatest biodiversity were at the least risk from allergies.

Much has been said recently about the declining effectiveness of antibiotics so perhaps getting some soil under our nails may not be a bad thing. Don’t forget to warm up though before you start digging otherwise you might strain your back. You wouldn’t believe the stats on that.