Home gardening boosts mental resilience during pandemic lockdown

Amid movement restrictions due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, home gardening activities appear to help improve mental resilience among people, especially in the domains of emotional regulation, confidence, and positive thinking, according to a recent Singapore study.

“This study is significant in providing the evidence that gardening may increase mental resilience … with an efficacious weekly dose of between 1–4 hours,” the researchers said. “The findings may be potentially applicable to other tropical cities, as urbanites worldwide continue to find ways to cope mentally with the stressors of city living, with the current COVID-19 pandemic notwithstanding.”

An online survey was administered to 5,661 members (gardening group; aged 45–54 years) of the Gardening with Edibles programme, a nationwide initiative that provided seed packets to anyone interested to grow their own edible plants at home. For comparison, the survey was also administered to 1,849 individuals (community group; aged 25–34 years) from the general public who had previously registered to the Community Care Buddy website to receive pandemic-related information.

Most participants in the gardening group said that they dedicated 1–4 hours each week for gardening activities (52.39 percent), with 15.40 percent and 7.35 percent saying they spent 4–8 and >8 hours on such activities per week. The remaining 24.68 percent spent <1 hour gardening per week. [Urban for Urban Green 2021;doi:10.1016/j.ufug.2021.127448]

Quade’s rank analysis of covariance, controlled for age and housing type, showed that within the gardening group, the weekly time spent on gardening activities significantly impacted mental resilience scores (p<0.001).

Post hoc analyses revealed that participants who dedicated <1 hour per week showed a significantly poorer overall score than all other frequency subgroups. Similarly, those with 1–4 hours of weekly gardening time had weaker overall mental resilience than comparators who spent >8 hours gardening.

In terms of the individual components of mental resilience, home gardening had significant impacts on emotional regulation, spirituality, relationship, confidence, and positive thinking; no such effects were reported for the domains of control and flexibility.

Further disaggregating by the weekly time spent showed that participants who reported <1 hour of gardening time per week scored significantly lower on all domains compared to those who spent more time gardening. Moreover, dedicating 1–4 hours per week also led to significantly lower scores in the relationship subscale.

Spearman’s rank-order correlation analysis confirmed a significant positive interaction between weekly gardening time and the different individual mental resilience factors.

“It is generally acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the lifestyles of people across the world significantly, and for a prolonged period,” the researchers said. “Like other cities, Singapore’s various safe management measures to curb the spread of the disease, while being relatively successful, may have some adverse effect on the mental well-being of people.”

“Gardening is a cost-effective activity and brings multiple benefits, ranging from increasing physical activity to improving mental well-being through the nurturing of plants,” they added.