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Is Gardening Medicine?

AJ Drew

AJ Drew

A meme floated around facebook.  It showed a forest and said it was medicine and it showed medicine and said it was crap.  I think it was aimed at treatment for mental illness, but it could have been any illness.  I am not discouraging proper treatment by an MD or medication from same.  Just wondering if folk feel there is something to the idea that gardening can be medicine,  After all, we know that when it comes to our physical health there is certainly a mental component,

For much time, I thought my psychological component was that despite physical challenges, gardening helps me feed my family.  Feeling useful is very uplifting.  But I am starting to think that even if I had another avenue to provide for my family that I would still be addicted to the feeling of helping something as small as a pepper seed turn into a large and beautiful plant.

So could gardening be medicine?
 
No. Gardening is not medicine. I would definitely say that gardening can be therapeutic, and I think many people here would agree. It can relieve stress and be good for you, both mentally and physically. But it's not medicine.
 
Gardening, for those who love it, is a medicine. The dirt that filters through our fingers cleans us as it makes us dirty. The seeds, helpless and small, stir fatherly/motherly results. The creation of nothing into something that gardening acomplishes. The pride that we feel when our babies burn someones face off. These atributes of gardening effect, caress, stimulate, excite, obsess and ultimately enlighten a gardeners very being.

Medicine, both pharm and placebo, are often taken to create the same effects one gets from gardening.
 
Rymerpt said:
Gardening, for those who love it, is a medicine. The dirt that filters through our fingers cleans us as it makes us dirty. The seeds, helpless and small, stir fatherly/motherly results. The creation of nothing into something that gardening acomplishes. The pride that we feel when our babies burn someones face off. These atributes of gardening effect, caress, stimulate, excite, obsess and ultimately enlighten a gardeners very being.
Medicine, both pharm and placebo, are often taken to create the same effects one gets from gardening.
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I would still argue the definition of therapy vs medicine... I would say that medicine is something you take while therapy is something that you do. Both have restorative or healing properties, but the method is different. I had a major surgery on my shoulder/chest and went through the process of physical therapy. I've also battled depression and went through the process of therapy/mental health counseling. I did that in conjunction with taking an anti-depressant medication.

To me gardening is a process, and to me that makes it a therapy. Sometimes therapy works better than medicine. No medicine (placebo or pharma) would have made my shoulder better after surgery. It took the time, patience, and work to recover.

The time, care, and work that go into gardening - at least to me - is therapy.

Now if you wanted to talk about the health benefits of eating hot peppers - that would be closer to medicine in my book.
 
to me gardening and tending animals is therapeutic, calms me down.
 
i like the way karoo stated it, very true to me.
 
and i grow my own medicine, to heck with pills and giving my money to doctors
 
Medicine and therapy can be, and usually are, seperated and two things entirerly. I would argue that they both can be lumped into the "medicine" pile. A doctor studies medicine. Pills are medicine. Therapy is also the "medicine or medical" treatment needed to help cure. Medicine is a broad statment. The physical therapy was "perscribed" as the "medicine".
 
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