As editor of NZ Gardener magazine and author of a new book on vegetable growing, Jo McCarroll spends a lot of time... well, staring at screens actually. But when she does get to feel her hands in the soil, her sense of happiness and hope starts to flow.
Some years ago, I was reading a scientific paper about soil microbiology, as you do, and one of the scientists wrote something that has really struck me.
There is a bacterium that is found in soil, she said, called Mycobacterium vaccae, often called M. vaccae for short. That bacteria was a kind of natural antidepressant, she said, and coming into contact with it had been shown to increase serotonin levels in the prefrontal cortex which in turn modulates your anxiety levels resulting in you feel happier and more relaxed. Getting your hands in the soil really does – scientifically speaking – improve your mood.
More than that, harvesting something you have grown triggers the release of the feel-good neurotransmitter, dopamine, which is the same neurochemical that is released when you eat something delicious, have good sex, or get a row of fire emojis on a thirst trap pic on the 'gram.
“Want to know why people garden?” this scientist wrote. “Because it really does make you happy.”
Now I don’t want to dismiss the entire field of microbiology. Pasteurisation and penicillin were great, obviously. But I read this, and thought, was taxpayers’ money wasted on this research? Because of course gardening makes you happier. Surely, we knew that already.
I have a medium-sized, usually quite untidy garden in an Auckland suburb. I grow a lot of vegetables and herbs and have crammed in about 20 different fruit trees. I mess about with ornamentals too, especially perennial flowers. And I have been thinking about the ways in which gardening makes my life better.
Some of it is pretty obvious. Spending time in the garden is time spent outside, and much of the rest of my day is spent indoors: working, eating, sleeping, doom scrolling and so on. My mood is always lifted by spending time in the fresh air and feeling the sun on my skin. Indeed, while research shows the average urban New Zealander spends about 90 percent of their time indoors, inside their home, work or school, in further scientific studies into the blindingly obvious it has repeatedly been proved that spending time outside will boost your mood, as well as improve your mental health and emotional wellbeing and deliver cognitive benefits.
Less sitting more doing
I saw someone wearing a T-shirt once that said garden is a verb not a noun. And while I am not sure that person should ever teach grammar for a living, I do take their wider point. Gardening is a doing word, and there’s a mental upside to that too. Even when I am just pottering about in my backyard, lifting dahlia tubers and mulching the roses and so on, it all involves moving around. Modern life – or my modern life anyway – involves a fair bit of sitting down while looking at a screen. So, it’s good to just be using my body, pulling, digging, twisting and bending. I even enjoy feeling tired after working in the garden. It’s nice to feel the satisfying fatigue of physical exertion rather than the low-level frustrated exhaustion one feels after spending a day fighting traffic and being copied in needlessly on emails.
There are a few more woo-woo benefits to gardening too, for me at least. I don’t want to throw around shop-worn terms like meditative or mindful, but spending time in the garden allows my mind to be both focused and in-the-moment; like doing a jigsaw except not entirely pointless. I used to think gardening gave me a sense of control in my life – with almost everything happening in the world being outside of my sphere of influence, my garden was a place where I could make things different and cause things to happen. But increasingly I think the real lesson is almost the opposite; there is so much in the garden that is outside of your control, and so much that will surprise or astonish you, the true lesson is that your garden, and the natural world, is not something you can stand outside of and control, but rather something you are part of. There is both a tremendous satisfaction and a sense of responsibility that comes with that awareness for me.
I remember talking to a reader of NZ Gardener magazine who was about to turn 100 years old, and still spent up to four hours in his own garden every day. I asked him why. He said it was a good way to stay active, obviously, and he liked spending time outside. But he also told me, with most of his life fairly likely at this stage to be behind him, gardening gave him an investment in the future. Every action you take in a garden is an act of hope, he said, trying to create a better future. I think of that often in my own garden, that I am spending time contributing to a more bountiful and more beautiful tomorrow. And who could fail to be cheered by that?
'This Makes Me Happy' is a 1News series about the things in life that bring us joy.
All images are by Sally Tagg (cropped from originals) and are courtesy of Vege Patch from Scratch, by Jo McCarrolll (Upstart Press) RRP $49.99, out now.
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