Healing Gardens: For Richer or Poorer

The power of therapeutic healing gardens, a six post series.

Post 2: For Richer or Poorer

Recently I came upon some research from the University of Glasgow that compared land use and mortality rates. Link is here: (https://www.hutton.ac.uk/research/projects/green-health).

For me these findings were very interesting because the research essentially concluded that neighborhoods with lots of “green space” (parks, municipal gardens, forests, etc.) had a lower risks of early mortality (let’s face it – we’re all going to die, so the mortality rate is 100% everywhere.) But according to the research, your chances of living longer go up when surrounded by green space.

The research also took into consideration other differences in areas, like socio-economic status, access to good health care, nutrition, and lower financial stress. Again, “Green Space” stood out as a great equalizer. It appears that it can help fill gaps that money and other other socio-economic burdens bring to the mortality rate.

Lesson learned: having a Healing Garden is good for your overall wellbeing. Being GardenGirl, I always suspected this, but it’s nice to see university research confirm it for me.