Making Mealtime Meaningful: Discover how we're giving back with the 12T Cares program →

We are all experiencing more time at home than we normally would if we were not facing a global pandemic. Of course, this means that some of us are probably a little bit more bored than normal as we struggle to find things around the house to occupy our time.

However, as we’re seeing more and more on social media, people are filling in their time with home improvement projects, including gardening. It’s probably safe to say that most of us under 50 aren’t big on gardening but in the last few months, the activity has seen a resurgence in popularity. As it turns out, the hobby could actually have some benefits for you as well.

According to a Princeton study which came out in Landscape and Urban Planning, the act of gardening at home can actually have positive effects on your mental health. The study looked at 370 different people living within the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and monitored their emotional moods throughout the day, including their happiness levels. Out of the 370 study participants, 118 of them were into home gardening. And as it turned out, these people who were home gardeners were actually reported to show high levels of happiness during the times when they were gardening when compared to other daily tasks. And the “emotional well-being” that the study recorded was higher in vegetable gardeners than ornamental gardeners. Of course, this could be a result of the relationship built with vegetable plants as people watch them grow and blossom throughout the whole planting season.

The authors of the study shared an interesting finding and stated, “Household gardening is the only activity, in this study, where women and low-income participants report higher EWB than men and medium/high-income participants respectively.”

The entire study helped to shed some light on the many benefits of home gardening, and how it comes with great benefits. Additionally, there have been other studies to suggest that being out in direct sunlight can also help to boost your serotonin levels – the chemicals in your brain that are linked to mood.