"Wellbeing gardens" are popping up in hospitals in the United Kingdom, giving staff, patients, and visitors a mental health boost.
In the last 10 months alone, 16 hospitals within the country's publicly funded National Health Service have contacted the Royal Horticultural Society for help in creating these gardens, according to the Guardian, which reported on the trend.
For example, Chapel Allerton in Leeds installed a "Garden for Recovery" in summer 2024.
"Having a few minutes or half an hour out there, in nature, sometimes in the sunshine — it helps," Hayleigh Austin-Richards, ward manager of a stroke rehabilitation unit at the hospital, told the publication. "You decompress and go back to work with renewed energy and a fresh set of eyes, feeling more cheerful and more focused."
Research supports the idea that time spent outdoors in spaces such as parks and gardens can boost mental health. For instance, one study found that just 10 minutes outside can help adults with mental illness. In England, government-supported pilot projects have found that nature-based treatment programs prescribed by doctors, mental health professionals, and social workers have made a difference for the mental health of patients as well.
Time in nature has also been linked with better sleep, improved concentration, and a decrease of death from chronic disease.
Meanwhile, gardens and other green spaces help support wildlife such as pollinators, which are critical in supporting food production.
"We are able to go out into the garden, and it immediately feels like a welcoming, bright and happy place that I and all of children community nursing teams has made," said one staff member at Longsight Medical Practice in Greater Manchester, which installed a wellbeing garden with the help of RHS. "It brings us together at lunch instead of working at our desks and makes us feel uplifted and refreshed to go back to work again."
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Several hours a week 🧑🌾 
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