“The Community Garden is Nature’s Samaritans!”

Gardening and particularly gardening in a group can bring many wonderful benefits to all, regardless of health, age or circumstance. We’ve invited Kate Green from Petworth’s Community Wellbeing Garden to explain.

Kate, is the founder of the charity, a wheelchair accessible therapeutic garden which has been running for 21 years. She is a permaculture designer and teacher, and has designed, set up and run various gardens (school, elder care, market) as she finds joy in re-connecting people with nature through community projects.

Community Gardening can be seen as ‘Permaculture in Action’, with the ethics of Earth care, People care and Fair Shares (resources, food), firmly embedded in all aspects of the projects.

The health benefits below have been so visible, the charity is now socially prescribed locally:

Better physical health

Through the exercise that gardening involves, tasks can be tailored to help us use or strengthen muscles which can improve mobility and flexibility where we need it.
Poor diets and mental health due to low income or other circumstances can be drastically improved with the addition of free healthy organic salads, fruit and vegetables. The vitamin content of food deteriorates with age, so to be able to eat food fresh the day it is picked keeps it at its optimum nutrition and flavour, something money can’t always buy.

Better mental health

Gardening can give tangible results from relatively small amounts of effort. Seeing seeds grow, digging potatoes out of the ground, standing back and looking at an area that has just been weeded, literally eating the fruit of one’s labour can create feelings of pride, purpose and achievement.

Gardening in a group can help people feel the benefit from the group’s achievement, avoid overwhelm, share tasks according to ability, pool resources and benefit from everyone’s skills. This can also help with positive feelings of self-esteem, improved confidence and regained self-respect.

Social inclusion

Gardening in a group offers the opportunity to connect with others in a gentle non-invasive way, side by side at one’s own pace, enjoying tea breaks together and the continuity of belonging to a regular non-judgemental group can help reduce feelings of isolation or exclusion.

Boost from being close to nature

Reconnecting with nature in our modern society brings huge benefits, often termed the ‘biophilia effect’. Stress levels reduce from being with plants and insects in a beautiful outdoor environment. Sensory benefits all have a profound impact on our sense of wellbeing. Often people feel a deep sense of peace and spiritual wellbeing within a garden or natural environment.

 

Community gardening for Petworth’s Community Wellbeing Garden is about bringing people together with nature, growing healthy food, healthy people and a healthy planet.

The charity supports more than 120 local people each week through social and therapeutic horticulture projects, mental health and wellbeing activities, community groups, outreach and food poverty initiatives. Recent participant feedback demonstrates the impact of this work, with 81% reporting improved mental health and 97% making new friends.

One participant said: “It’s been a lifeline. I’ve been supported out of many dark places in my mind and in my life… The Community Garden = Nature’s Samaritans!”

For more information and to support: communitywellbeinggarden.org/

By Kate Green