The inextricable link between gardening and happiness | House & Garden

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the recent epiphany in gardens and mental health is a new discovery, but gardens have long been linked to good health and quiet reflection. In fact, the late 20th-century rift in our relationship with the natural world can be seen as a historical blip in an otherwise unbroken bond between man and nature. The well-documented surge in interest in the natural world during Covid was in fact a restoration of a healthier relationship that we as a society had been enjoying for centuries.

The concept of enclosure and separation from the chaos of the outside world was, and remains, central to many styles of garden across the ancient and modern world – Persian pleasure gardens, Islamic paradise gardens, Chinese courtyard gardens and Japanese rock gardens all foster a sense of seclusion and inward introspection in a tradition that predates our recent fascination with gardens by a couple of millennia.

Today, gardens are being touted as the solution to all manner of mental crises from postnatal depression and PTSD to less acute but just as tricky to solve issues such as loneliness and isolation. However in contemporary Britain, access to gardens and green spaces is becoming increasingly privileged. Where once gardens were a de facto part of both public and private properties, today land is an ever-more precious commodity, and vital community spaces such as parks, hospital gardens and school playgrounds have been sold off to make room for development, and houses with gardens have been divided up into flats. In doing so, we have lost a key resource that has been keeping us well for thousands of years.

Early records show that humans were reaping the benefits of gardens as far back as 600BC. During the