Gardening is not only a passion: it is a public well being intervention.

Gardening is good for your mental and physical well-being. It’s a gut feeling shared by many people who enjoy digging in the dirt. But a new study from CU Boulder backs that feeling with scientific evidence.

Jill Litt, a professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, recruited nearly 300 budding Denver-area gardeners for the process. Half of them were paired with community garden lots from Denver Urban Gardens. The other half formed the control group.

The researchers followed the participants over the course of a year and found that the gardening group achieved a variety of benefits along with their crops. They ended up eating more fiber – consuming the fruits of their labor – and being more physically active – going to and from community gardens and gardening themselves. Both are important measures to reduce the risk of chronic diseases like cancer and diabetes.

Litt says the gardening group also reported lower levels of stress and anxiety. “What we hear in the qualitative interviews is that they feel relaxed,” Litt said. “You dial into this acoustic landscape, the birds, the breeze. The sensations on her skin affect the ground. They talk about the stress just falling off their shoulders, getting their hands dirty, forgetting their problems, forgetting things that upset them. And they build social relationships.”

This building of social connections is why Litt says working on a plot in a community garden is most beneficial. However, she says that gardening at home also has some physical and mental health benefits.

“I think of [gardening] as a covert health intervention. People do it because they love it, and if they love it, they’re likely to stick with it. By the way, it has the benefit that you could start eating better and you’ll probably be a little bit more active, and it could reduce your stress and anxiety,” she said.

Litt hopes her study will spur more support and funding for community garden projects. “I would like to see the healthcare landscape change, where gardens become part of the system of interventions that represent a legitimate health care expenditure,” she said, calling for investment in gardens because they are “a public health strategy.” be [with] Health Benefits.”