Sixty seconds on . . . gardening
BMJ 2016; 353 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i2925 (Published 24 May 2016) Cite this as: BMJ 2016;353:i2925
Is someone leading us up the garden path?
You may scoff, but a new UK report (http://bit.ly/1TEIPk8) has found that putting the rake and secateurs to use improves mental and physical health at all ages.
Who wrote the report?
It’s by the well respected think tank the King’s Fund, which usually concerns itself with thornier issues such as the NHS deficit and health policy.
OK, show me this evidence
The report admits that few randomised controlled trials have looked at gardening, but it’s hard to see research funders giving grants for studies on pruning and weeding. The report did find that gardening at schools significantly increased children’s fruit and vegetable intake. Among adults, allotment gardening has been shown to improve mood, self esteem, and cortisol concentrations (which can be associated with acute stress). And in people with depression and anxiety gardening reduced symptoms and improved social functioning. Evidence is also emerging that gardening can help to prevent falls in older people and prevent cognitive decline.
How does this relate to the NHS?
The report argues that there is much that the NHS and social care system can do to take advantage of people’s love of gardening. Clinical commissioning groups could include gardening in social prescribing projects. Up to a fifth of GPs’ time is spent on problems with social causes, so an option that could improve health without increasing costs of prescribing seems attractive. Gardening could also be used to promote recovery from illness. The charity Macmillan Cancer Support offers gardening packs to encourage people to ease into physical activity after treatment for cancer.
How could this work in practice?
In London the Lambeth GP Food Co-Op is one example of many flourishing projects. It has created a network of gardens at 11 general practices and King’s College Hospital where GPs, nurses, and patients grow food and vegetables and discuss diet and nutrition.
Come into the garden, Maud . . .
One of the GPs in the Lambeth project, Vikesh Sharma, said, “It provides the only platform for me as a GP to see my patients outside the physical walls of my surgery, reinforces the idea of community doctors, and reminds me of the wider context of what being healthy actually means.”