What is grief gardening?

When you lose someone, the grief will never go away completely — but there are healthy ways to cope. Some people find that gardening as they grieve, known as ‘grief gardening’, can gently relieve some of the emotional and physical symptoms after the loss of a loved one.

Doctors often prescribe outdoor activities to help patients overcome poor mental health. Numerous studies have found significant benefits from spending up to an hour a day in the garden, including decreasing the stress hormone cortisol, reducing blood pressure and calming nerves.

This is because gardening has many therapeutic benefits; it’s a sensory process of creating and healing, packed with colour, texture and fragrance, rain or shine, with fresh air to blow the cobwebs away. Gardens are both active to work and restful to sit in, helping us to relax and let go, taking a break away from our worries to breathe in nature and become temporarily carefree. 

If you don’t have a garden you can still enjoy gardening by growing plants and flowers on a windowsill or by volunteering in a community garden. And you certainly don’t have to be greenfingered; gardening is for everyone.

The winter months in particular can be hard when you are grieving due to the shorter, darker days and the cold weather. If you start gardening in the autumn, you will see the results of a winter garden when you need it most, encouraging you to get outside and get moving, even on a winter’s day. Local wildlife will also be struggling through the winter months, so plan a wildlife garden in autumn. More on that below…

How can gardening reduce feelings of grief?

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow” Audrey Hepburn.

You never completely get over the loss of a loved one, but the most intense, debilitating feelings, will lessen over time as you learn how to cope. When you first lose a loved one, it is hard to contemplate the future — and you may not want to. Gardening provides an activity in which you can gently move forwards and experience the best of the world, as you plant seeds, watch things grow, work with the changing seasons, and see the life and death cycle within the natural world. 

Gardening will improve your emotional wellbeing and your physical health — both of which will help you to positively work through your grief. You can choose to garden alone if you feel that you need to take a break from other people, or you can include friends and family in your gardening tasks if you need company or support.

The benefits of gardening that help to reduce painful emotions

Emotional wellbeing	Gardening immerses you in the present moment, helping you to reduce shock, anger or sadness and connect to nature as you feel the earth between your fingers and the sun on your skin.
Social wellbeing	Making connections with others who share an interest in gardening can help to reduce social isolation, and lessen those feelings of grief and loneliness.
Physical wellbeing	From gentle activities like watering, to more intensive work-outs like digging and raking, you will get your body moving and the blood pumping, helping to reduce feelings of sadness or anger.

 Grief can never be rushed, it will ebb and flow as memories surface and events come and go. But gardening can help you get through the hardest times by tempering the most overwhelming feelings. 

What are the benefits of gardening for mental health?

In some cases, grief can add to ongoing mental health issues or it can lead to them.

Studies have found that gardening can have many benefits for our health, including our mental health, helping to:

✔ Improve concentration

✔ Lower the stress hormone (cortisol)

✔ Increase quality of life

✔ Interrupt harmful ruminations (excessive, intrusive thoughts)

✔ Manage symptoms of depression and anxiety

✔ Lower BMI

Types of mental health problems that can be triggered by grief include:

Stress

The death of a loved one is considered to be one of the most stressful things that can happen to you. Gardening can decrease stress levels during any stressful period in your life and is particularly effective in helping during bereavement. One recent study indicates that people who garden every day have stress levels 4.2% lower than people who do not garden at all.

Depression

The NHS are increasingly prescribing time in nature to help treat symptoms of depression. Patients with depression are often referred to voluntary organisations for community work including gardening, where you can meet and socialise with others. Incredibly, soil has even been found to contain antidepressant properties — brain cells were activated by bacteria in the soil to produce serotonin. Serotonin is the hormone that stabilises your mood and promotes feelings of contentment.

Anxiety

The loss of a loved one can exacerbate existing anxiety disorders, or it can sometimes lead to them. Symptoms of anxiety can include excessive worrying, obsessive negative thought patterns (rumination), excessive worrying, and panic attacks. 

Gardening provides an opportunity to practice mindfulness (being aware of the present moment to calm a panic attack — grounding you when you notice the colours and smells around you). And research has found that spending time outside in nature can counteract all these symptoms by decreasing neural activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex (the area of the brain associated with rumination), and increasing emotion regulation.

Produced by Memorials of Distinction whose website can be found HERE