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Long gone are the days that gardening was just for people of retirement age. The days, gardening is all the rage with a survey released in 2024 revealing that 83% of young people now describe gardening as ’cool’ and 54% would rather amble around a garden centre than dance the night away in a club.

The timing for this couldn’t be better as the nation’s granddad, David Attenborough, urged in new documentary ‘Ocean’ that that collectively, gardens make up a significant area that can support biodiversity and embracing a ‘natural’ (i.e: reducing human intervention, pesticides and limiting the use of lawnmowers) approach to the hobby could benefit the health of our local ecosystems.

Now, hormonal health expert, Mike Kocsis at Balance My Hormones, reveals that gardening can actually have huge health benefits for us, too.

The health benefits of gardening

Cortisol regulation

Kocsis explains: “When cortisol, the stress hormone, is chronically high, it can cause problems like poor sleep due to production of the sleep hormone, melatonin, being supressed, a weakened immune system, interrupted digestion, and even reproductive hormones like oestrogen, progesterone, and testosterone being supressed.”

Yikes.

This is where gardening comes in. Gardening is a gentle physical activity that doesn’t give the same cortisol spike that comes from intense exercise.

Kocsis adds: “Even small tasks like digging, pruning, and

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