get planting on national tree day, your health depends on it!

National Tree Day is coming up and it's got me thinking about... gardening. I firmly believe that gardening can improve all aspects of your health, which is why I'd love to tell you about a great report commissioned by Planet Ark called "Just what the doctor ordered", which talks about the health benefits of gardening. 

For your physical health, you get a great dose of Vitamin D from all the sunshine, not to mention, fresh air for those lungs. Gardening is an incidental form of exercise, and research links it to reduced obesity. For this reason I often trade traditional 'exercise' for sweaty gardening (think: digging, turning soil...). 

For your mental health, gardening promotes mindfulness, welcomes serotonin and 'happy' hormones and can be a strategy for managing low-moods. 

For your intellectual development, gardening supports the right side of the brain to increase your creativity and imagination. Further to this, the mindfulness it promotes can also stimulate 'brain power'. Being in the present moment gives your brain space to focus on what it needs and take in information quickly and completely. 

The findings also identified some scary facts about kids and the great outdoors:

• 25% kids surveyed never climbed a tree
• 17% never visited a national park, and 
• 1 in 5 carers stated they didn't know enough nature-based activities that kids could do

National Tree Day is coming up, and with your health in mind, I encourage you to get on the tree-planting-bandwagon and make some time to get in the garden on July 28.

To find out more about National Tree Day, click here.