Home Gardening and the Health and Well-Being of Adolescents

Abstract

Background:The current paper explores the associations between home gardening and dietary behaviours, physical activity, mental health and social relationships among secondary school students in New Zealand.Methods: Data were drawn from a national youth health and wellbeing survey, conducted in 2012. In total, 8500 randomly selected students from 91 randomly selected secondary schools completed the survey.Results: Two thirds of students had a vegetable garden at home and one quarter of all students participated in home gardening. Students participating in gardening were most likely to be male, of a Pacific Island ethnicity, of younger age, and living in a rural area. Gardening was positively associated with healthy dietary habits among students, such as greater fruit and vegetable consumption. Gardening was also positively associated with physical activity and improved mental health and wellbeing. Students who participate in gardening reported slightly lower levels of depressive symptoms, enhanced emotional wellbeing and experience higher family connection than students who do not participate in gardening.Conclusions: Gardening may make a difference for health and nutrition behaviours and may contribute to adolescents' health and wellbeing in a positive manner. Health promoters should be encouraged to include gardening in future interventions for young people.

Exploring the Relationship between School Gardens, Food Literacy and Mental Well-Being in Youth Using Photovoice

“…Local school and community partners, who have worked with the authors, shared observations and comments related to school connectedness, improved self-esteem, feeling safe in school gardens and mental well-being about students who were involved in school garden and food literacy activities. While similar observations have been noted in other locations including the USA [1], New Zealand [10], Australia [11] and Greece [11] no local research data was available, particularly from a youth perspective.…”

Converting Home Spaces into Food Gardens at the Time of Covid-19 Quarantine: all the Benefits of Plants in this Difficult and Unprecedented Period

“…Besides cultivating and trying to be partially self-sufficient for fruit and vegetables (that are expensive and hard to find now), this could give me psychological benefits. There is an association between home gardening and physical and mental well-being, and this has been demonstrated for various categories of people at risk (Grabbe et al 2013;van Lier et al 2017;John et al 2016;Quick et al 2017). I had a lot of material in my garage, some pipes, shelves, supports, other stuff, and hardware.…”

Community Gardening: Stress, Well-Being, and Resilience Potentials

“…However, the limitation of this study is the lack of a no-treatment control group for the comparison of the effects of gardening. In a survey study, home gardening was found to be positively correlated with improved mental health and well-being [75]. Adolescents who did home gardening reported fewer depressive symptoms and improved emotional well-being than those who did not do gardening.…”