>From: "Tfpc" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Wall Street Journal says Grow Your Greens for Good MentalHealth
>Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 17:04:04 -0500
>
>From the Wall Street Journal
>
>The Leafy Green Road
>To Good Mental Health
>
>New Science Points to Benefits
>Of Weeding, Watering Gardens
>
>By MICHAEL WALDHOLZ
>Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>
>Stuck in an emotional funk after a personal loss, Janice Mawhinney couldn't
>muster the enthusiasm to tend her backyard garden in Toronto for three
>years. Then, inexplicably, one day this past spring, she found herself
>vigorously weeding again, her spirits slowly blossoming along with a
>long-concealed blue lupine, a pink and white bleeding heart, several Shasta
>daisies, and a host of other recovered plants.
>
>As Ms. Mawhinney restored the garden, it in turn helped restore her. Now,
>"every morning I rush to look out at all the color through my bathroom
>window," says Ms. Mawhinney, a 58-year-old reporter at the Toronto Star.
>"In
>just a few minutes I feel refreshed."
>
>Common sense and experience tell us that hiking in the wild or working in a
>garden can be emotionally restorative. Now, scientists are beginning to
>understand why: Gardening -- or simply observing a lush landscape -- holds
>a
>powerful ability to promote measurable improvements in mental and even
>physical health.
>
>Vertical gardening methods like this at the Chicago Botanic Garden's
>Buehler
>Enabling Garden not only promote easy tending but also clearly outline
>planting areas for people with low vision.
>
>Building on the science, a new practice of horticulture therapy is
>sprouting. Increasingly, hospitals are using the insights of environmental
>psychologists to build small but elaborate gardens for patients, visitors
>and even stressed-out doctors. Some urban botanical gardens and
>health-rehabilitation centers are creating so-called healing gardens with
>horticultural-therapy programs that teach patients and the public about the
>recuperative effect the natural world has on the human psyche.
>
>"If a researcher had seriously proposed two decades ago that gardens could
>improve medical outcomes, the position would have been met with skepticism
>by most behavioral scientists, and with derision by most physicians," says
>Roger Ulrich, a Texas A&M University professor and a leading researcher in
>the effects of environment on behavior. "We now have studies showing that
>psychological and environmental factors can affect physiological systems
>and
>health status."
>
>One study published in June found that people who were exposed to nature
>recovered from stress more quickly than others who weren't; what's more,
>the
>positive effects took hold within just a few minutes. Dr. Ulrich's research
>has showed that hospitalized patients whose windows looked out at landscape
>scenery recovered from surgery more quickly than those without such access.
>Other studies have found that simply viewing a garden or another natural
>vista can quickly reduce blood pressure and pulse rate and can even
>increase
>brain activity that controls mood-lifting feelings.
>
>A growing body of evidence suggests that humans are hard-wired not just to
>enjoy a pleasant view of nature, but to actually exploit it, much like a
>drug, to relax and refresh after a stressful experience. Our earliest
>ancestors, Dr. Ulrich theorizes, likely needed a way to swiftly recover
>from
>a traumatic experience such as a hunt, a battle or an attack from a wild
>animal. "You can imagine that those who could look out at the open
>savannah,
>seeing its safety and tranquility, and quickly feel calm but also alert to
>their environment would likely have a survival benefit over others," Dr.
>Ulrich says.
>
>Scientists have documented this restorative effect in a number of
>controlled
>experiments. In the study published in the June issue of the Journal of
>Environmental Psychology, Terry Hartig and colleagues at the University of
>California at Irvine measured markedly different physiological, attentional
>and mood changes in test subjects exposed to natural or urban settings.
>
>In the experiment, 112 young adults were assigned a variety of stressful
>tasks, including driving to a site they hadn't visited before. Afterward,
>the people who sat in a room with tree views and then walked through a
>nature preserve showed declining blood pressure and substantially more
>positive change in their feelings than those who sat in a windowless room
>and then walked in an area of medium-density urban development.
>
>Some of the changes could be measured within minutes of being exposed to
>the
>natural settings, says Dr. Hartig, now at Uppsala University in Gavle,
>Sweden. He provides advice to several European cities whose planners are
>considering expanding so-called urban forests.
>
>'Immediate Calming Effect'
>
>James Raimes, 64 years old and retired from publishing, experiences an
>effect like this when he returns to his modest country home in Chatham,
>N.Y.
>"The sounds, the smells, and the sights have an immediate calming effect as
>soon as I step out of the car," Mr. Raimes says.
>
>Many gardeners say they lose track of time while weeding, planting or
>mulching. "I can and often do garden from sunup to sundown, to the
>exclusion
>of many other things in my life," Mr. Raimes admits. Indeed, as people who
>move to fecund environments like Florida's can attest, the biological draw
>of gardening can be powerfully addictive -- though it's clearly a much
>safer
>outlet than other addictions.
>
>Many cultures have long understood the harmonizing influences of flora.
>Henry Thoreau, the early American naturalist, wrote persuasively about the
>impact of nature on human well-being in his book, "Walden." The pioneering
>landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, "understood the need for
>fatigued urban dwellers to recover their capacity to focus in the context
>of
>nature," says Stephen Kaplan, who, along with his wife, Rachel, at the
>University of Michigan have helped found the field of environmental
>psychology. In the 1860s, Mr. Olmsted employed his insights in designing
>New
>York City's Central Park, with its acres of rambling walks and natural
>vistas, as well as a host of other city parks modeled after it.
>
>"The gardens of the ancient Egyptian nobility, the walled gardens of
>Persian
>settlements in Mesopotamia, and the gardens of merchants in medieval
>Chinese
>cities indicate that early urban peoples went to considerable lengths to
>maintain contact with nature," according to Texas A&M's Dr. Ulrich. More
>recently, Harvard zoologist Edward O. Wilson has written extensively on
>this
>natural affinity, which he calls "biophilia" and defines as a partly
>genetic
>tendency by humans to respond positively to nature.
>
>The latest research and writings are serving as the intellectual basis for
>the relatively new practice of horticultural therapy. Practitioners say
>their experience shows that gardening can have an especially beneficial
>mental-health impact because it provides a sense of control, a
>psychological
>counter to stress and anxiety. This is especially important for patients
>who
>are recovering from stroke or other traumas or are learning to live with a
>physical or mental disability, says Teresia Hazen, who oversees
>horticulture-therapy programs for Legacy Health System in Portland, Ore.
>
>"For patients who find themselves restricted by a disability, even the
>simplest gardening experience, such as growing a potted plant from a
>cutting, gives them a feeling of control," says Ms. Hazen. "Gardening ,
>more
>than most rehab activities, has the ability to be very distracting," she
>adds, noting that simply taking people's minds off their problems
>alleviates
>pain and depression.
>
>'A Source of Relief'
>
>Ms. Hazen recently helped design an award-winning garden in Legacy's Good
>Samaritan Hospital that has a dual purpose. Rehab patients receive therapy
>in it, she says, but also "many doctors and nurses just come by and sit or
>stroll or just stand and gaze, maybe just for a few moments. It's easy to
>see it draws them and is a source of relief."
>
>Now, several city-run botanical gardens are hiring horticulture therapists
>to run public programs to expose city dwellers to nature's therapeutic
>benefits. Chicago's Botanic Garden provides a range of
>horticultural-therapy
>services -- including planting, weeding, cultivating, watering and
>harvesting -- both to private health agencies that treat the handicapped
>and
>to people who come in off the street.
>
>Even some prisons are looking to gardens for relief. The New York
>Horticultural Society directs one such program, called the Greenhouse
>Project, at New York's Riker's Island facility. Inmates work in the garden,
>but some have also been allowed out to build gardens in public spaces
>throughout the city.
>
>Several schools of architecture now have academics on staff who specialize
>in studying what kinds of gardens are most likely to attract users. "Some
>hospitals just throw in a few bushes and trees and hope they are
>accomplishing the wanted effect," says Clare Cooper Marcus, a professor at
>University of California, Berkeley, who has traveled the world analyzing
>gardens in health-care settings. A better garden, she says, "allows people
>to interact with the natural setting."
>
>Write to Michael Waldholz at [log in to unmask]
>
>****************************************************************
>
>
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