Abstract
“Whoever wants to know me completely must know my garden, because my garden is my heart.” This famous German quote goes back to Prince Hermann Ludwig Heinrich von Pückler-Muskau, born as Count Pückler in 1785 and probably well known for the ice cream combination of strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate that was named after him “Fürst Pückler.” However, he himself became famous in his role as a landscape gardener, with two of his gardens being listed on the UNESCO Lists of World Heritage Sites. 1
From a therapeutic point of view, there is a strong body of evidence, with respect to clinical studies on the efficacy of gardening for a variety of health and mental problems. 2 –4 More precisely, gardening activities in school combined with physical activities have a significant impact on children's fruit and vegetable consumption, 5 horticultural therapy improves symptoms, quality of life, and social functioning of patients suffering on schizophrenia, 6 and patients suffering on dementia show alleviated agitate behaviors and a higher level of engagement in activities. 7
But going back to the opening quote, what does it mean? Probably there is not only a therapeutic, but at the same time a diagnostic potential of gardening: because nature and humans have an aesthetic relationship, 8 the cultivation and design of a landscape, and thus the creation of a “landscape art”, can be considered a special kind of landscape “drawing process.” Materials such as plants, bricks, or wood are “drawn” and arranged in a landscape image. In this context, a new kind of landscape image is created.
This is consistent with the Encyclopedia Britannica, where gardening is defined as “the laying out and care of a plot of ground devoted partially or wholly to the growing of plants such as flowers, herbs, or vegetables.” The Encyclopedia Britannica concludes that “gardening can be considered both as an art, concerned with arranging plants harmoniously in their surroundings, and as a science, encompassing the principles and techniques of plant cultivation.” 9
If this is true, then a standardized analysis of horticultural activity comparable to the analysis of drawing processes 10 should show some associations between subjects' psychological state and elements in the process of garden design, such as movement patterns. And indeed a first pilot study found some promising results: a lower movement entropy in a gardening task correlates with a higher mental distress for men, but lower for women. 11,12 Similar results are also found in the literature. 13 Presumably, women have a tendency to compensate for psychological stress with increased activity to obtain a sense of satisfaction, a feeling of gratification when viewing their artwork while gardening. 14
Finally, and quite interestingly, when rating the final landscape picture, this did not produce the same strong association. 15 Thus, movement analysis in accordance with other findings is a promising method to predict mental distress in particular in naturalistic settings. 16,17
Therefore, the future may bring further research results on this topic. Or even a “technological” transformation as described in Van Tondors' study on Japanese Zen Gardens: “In the distant future the skill of gardening may come to be regarded as one of our most advanced forms of technology, namely, that of tuning the environment to provide harmonized mental and physical stimulus—technology in the image of nature's best design.” 18 Together with an ice cream (probably not Fürst Pückler) on hand, this really sounds promising!