This study was conducted to find out the influence of plant cultivating activities program to reduce the stress of parents. Saliva cortisol salivettes system method was taken effect for this study with total 27 of parents who are 39.15±3.5 years old on average and have children attending primary school. The cortisol level was measured once a week, total 10 times, before/after 90 minutes plant cultivating activities program. As the result of this program, the total cortisol decreased after the plant cultivating activities program and there was a statistically significant difference with the total cortisol (t=14.521, p <.01). In addition to this, the final session has the most effect on decreasing the stress compare to other previous sessions. As the result of asking 8 questions on a 7 point Likert scale about preference for plants and plant-related experiences before/after the plant cultivating activities program, the score difference of "The experiences of growing plants still have an influence on my life" was highest between before and after the program at a statistically significant difference. These results imply that the plant cultivation program can boost stress-reducing effects, allow parents being familiar with plants, and provide positive influence on relieving parenting stress. In addition to this, the standardization of physiological changes can be established more easily with the saliva cortisol method as it is less stressful to the subject and a more convenient test, that can be taken anytime and anywhere, compared to the blood cortisol method.

We designed a pilot study to develop a family interaction model-integrated a care farming program with mother-child pairs as the participants. In this pilot study, we aimed to assess the effects of the care farming program on communication skills and psychological health in families. Sixteen mother-child pairs in Sejong, South Korea participated in this study. The families participated in a care farming program once a week for six weeks (90 min per session) between May and July 2018. The care farming program was developed based on parenting education skills, strengths-based cognitive behavioral therapy, and the emotional intelligence model; the result was a family interaction model intended to improve communication and psychological health among mothers and children. The program consisted of gardening activities such as making a garden plot, planting transplants, harvesting, and cooking the harvested crops. Upon completion of the six-session program, we evaluated communication with the Parent-Children Communication Inventory, depression with the Beck Depression Inventory, and resilience with the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale among the mothers. We also evaluated emotional intelligence among the children with the Emotional Intelligence Scale. According to post-intervention results, mothers showed significantly increased resilience, improved communication skills with their child, and decreased depression, while children showed significantly improved emotional intelligence (p < 0.05). Despite the study’s limitation in establishing causality between the care farming program and the observed effects on family health, the care farming program clearly contributed to the observed improvements of mother-child communication skills, mothers’ psychological health, and children’s emotional intelligence, which in turn improved overall family health.

This study was conducted to investigate the change of workers physiology and sensitivity according to the plant decoration activity using electroencephalographic (EEG), electrocardiogram, and semantic differential (SD) methods on 31 male and female workers in their twenties. Plant decoration activity and writing documents on a computer (WDOC) were carried out for 10 minutes each. The relative slow alpha power spectrum (RSA) has been highly exhibited at most measurement points at plant decoration activity compared to WDOC, and ratio of alpha to high beta spectrum (RAHB) was higher in the parietal lobe responsible for visual function in charge of visual function and showed stable and relaxed effect with little stress or tension. In addition, the relatively fast alpha power spectrum (RFA), which is responsible for visual function, after WDOC was higher than after plant decoration activity in the left parietal lobe (P <.05). Although not statistically significant, the relative high beta power spectrum (RHB) and the ratio of mid beta to theta (RMT), which are stress concentration indexes with tension, were highly regarded as a whole when performing WDOC. There was little difference in heart rate between after both activities. However, high frequency (HF) component indicating parasympathetic nervous system activity was more highly active after WDOC than Planting decoration activity, and the low frequency (LF) component indicating sympathetic nervous system activity tended to be lower after WDOC than after planting activity meaning that plant activity have a sense of stability than WDOC and these results were similar to brain wave analysis. In addition, the sense of comfort, naturalness, calm were significantly higher when the plant decoration activity was performed than when the WDOC was performed in the SD emotional vocabulary survey. These results could be interpreted that plant decoration activity induced more physiologically and psychologically stability and relaxation than WDOC, and enhanced attention ability in appropriate awakening state.

The objective of this study was to investigate the current situations of farms in South Korea which provide care farming activities in order to develop and settle care farms. A questionnaire that includes 60 questions about resources, clients, management, background of establishment, budget, manpower, organization, etc. was developed by the researchers. The survey was conducted by email and phone interview in the period of July to August, 2016. Five farms were participated in this study. As the results, each farm had a different size of land, about 744 -39,670 m 2 . The farms were classified by different types of farming activities such as cultivating horticultural crops or cultivating horticultural crops and raising animals. The background of farmers was health, special education, social welfare or professional farmer. The income sources were from care farming programs, educational program, and crop production. The participants in the care farm were children with or without disability, adolescents, adolescents with behavior problem, adults, adults with mental disability or developmental disability, mental illness, dementia, addict, etc. The major activities in care farms were plant cultivating, harvesting, garden maintenance, cooking by using harvest, crop processing, waling in the farm, caring for animals, dealing with farm work equipment, and farming activity with local residents, etc. The participation duration was 25% for one-day experience, less than two weeks in a week, and more than six months, respectively. To settle and develop care farming of South Korea, the concept, clients, operation, professional manpower, policy, support, etc. should be established.

This study was conducted to find out the effects of plant cultivation activities in the village gardening program hosted by Gyeonggi-do on the psychology and physiology of participants. This study conducted a survey on 20 villagers aged 57.70±9.23 on average and collected their saliva before Session 1 and after the final Session 10. The experiment was conducted by carrying out the village gardening program once a week for total 10 weeks. Psychological assessment was conducted by measuring the level of plant cultivation experience, four elements (repose, fascination, coherence, legibility) of the Perceived Restorativeness Scale (PRS) and stress levels, and also conducting the Wilcoxon paired signed ranks test. As the result of comparatively analyzing the saliva collected before and after the program, the total cortisol level, which is a stress hormone, decreased with statistical significance after the program (t=14.521, p<.001). The level of plant cultivation activities increased with statistical significance after the program, and the PRS increased with statistical significance in the three elements of repose, fascination and legibility excluding coherence. In addition, as the result of examining the change in the stress level of participants with the sum of all item scores, it was found that the stress level decreased with statistical significance (p<.05) from 17.65 points to 15.30 points after the program. Hence, plant cultivation activities in the village community have positive effects such as attention restoration or stress relief. In addition, the activities can also contribute to mental connection and healthcare of residents.