GWD is aimed at increasing awareness of ‘good living’. So how does one cultivate wellness? The day aims to create space in one’s life to pause and become centred for just one day, breaking free of everyday stress and bad habits. On June 12 make time to make peace with yourself and live in the moment.
Outside, take off your shoes and feel the grass under your feet, do a meditation in the winter sunshine or meander through the bush listening to the sounds of nature and the feeling the elements as you connect with your roots and become grounded. Creating a candle corner or lighting a wood fire really play up on our instinctual pull towards the flame, something that outdoor fire pits and bonfires have been doing for Millennium. Even setting up a pond or water feature can provide the perfect backdrop for nature contemplation and quiet; a chance to slow down and awaken your senses.
Gardening can be a conduit to emotional, physical, intellectual, and environmental wellness. Emotional wellness is linked with managing stress, and be it watering your garden after a hard day at work or working out in your garden with some ‘weeder-cise’, both activities will serve to help you unwind and release - the later will help your physical self too as you burn your way through all those kilojoules digging, raking, lifting and squatting around the yard. The clean air plants provide us is another side benefit. Studies such as the NASA Study of Interior Landscape Plants for Indoor Air Pollution Abatement reinforce the importance of removing toxins, even in our interior environments, and demonstrate the role plants can play in this. A recent RMIT study recommended having 5 plants in a room to ‘work’ their way through the atmosphere effectively. Intellectually speaking, whilst you might not be able to theorise with your potted plants, working out how they are going to grow best, planning for harvests, and even designing the spaces they create, are all terrific brain-ercise, so much so that gardening is one of the things they recommend as a preventative hobby for Alzheimer’s Disease. Of course, gardening is also one of the best ways we can improve our environment and create a human habitat that allow us to thrive. To read more about that, check out or blog from World Environment Day or our article on Biophilic Design.
By: Meredith Kirton