Allotment gardens

Allotment Therapy: More empirical evidence on the salutary benefits of gardening

    Warrenville Lakes Homeowners Community Garden. Photo by Shawna Coronado, www.shawnacoronado.com

Warrenville Lakes Homeowners Community Garden. Photo by Shawna Coronado, www.shawnacoronado.com

Speaking of allotment gardens (see our 1/13 post about Charlie Hopkinson’s photography of allotment gardens), here’s an interesting study:

30 allotment gardeners were assigned to do a stressful task (not related to gardening). Immediately after, half of the gardeners worked in their own allotment plot and half read indoors, both for 30 minutes. With both groups, cortisol (a stress indicator) and self-reported stress levels went down, but they decreased significantly more in the group that gardened. I think I’m going to build me a greenhouse…

And here’s a moving blog by someone who struggles with depression and finds solace in her allotment garden. The blog is Allotment Therapy: A personal view of Ecotherapy, and the post is “The Wisdom of Plants.”

Stay tuned for another article on this topic, coming very soon!

Full abstract (link to the Journal of Health Psychology website to access the abstract and to buy the article): Stress-relieving effects of gardening were hypothesized and tested in a field experiment. Thirty allotment gardeners performed a stressful Stroop task and were then randomly assigned to 30 minutes of outdoor gardening or indoor reading on their own allotment plot. Salivary cortisol levels and self-reported mood were repeatedly measured. Gardening and reading each led to decreases in cortisol during the recovery period, but decreases were significantly stronger in the gardening group. Positive mood was fully restored after gardening, but further deteriorated during reading. These findings provide the first experimental evidence that gardening can promote relief from acute stress.

Full citation: Van Den Berg, Agnes and Custers, Mariëtte H.G. (2011). “Gardening Promotes Neuroendocrine and Affective Restoration from Stress.” Journal of Health Psychology, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 3-11.

The Allure of Allotment Gardens: An interview with photographer Charlie Hopkinson

Walworth Community Garden, UK. Photo by Charlie Hopkinson, www.charliehopkinson.com

Walworth Community Garden, UK. Photo by Charlie Hopkinson, www.charliehopkinson.com

Charlie Hopkinson, a photographer based in the UK, has two primary subjects: People and gardens. Among many other things, he shoots portraits for Gardens Illustrated, which is how I met him, on an uncharacteristically sunny day at Kew Gardens in London. We talked about all sorts of things, but his interest in shooting allotment gardens (akin to community gardens in the U.S.) intrigued me. I asked him to send me some images, and then invited him to do this short interview.

Allotment garden, UK. Photo by Charlie Hopkinson, www.charliehopkinson.com

Photo by Charlie Hopkinson, www.charliehopkinson.com

NS: You have photographed some pretty high-profile people, from John Malkovich and Angelica Houston to Beth Chatto and Dan Pearson. And your landscape and botanical photographs are beautiful, though somewhat more formal than this series (is it officially a series?). What interests you about allotment gardens?
CH: I’m interested in photographing allotments because they almost always reflect the personality of the gardener. Many of the formal gardens I photograph reflect the personality of the garden designer. Allotment gardens are often pretty unstructured, which I like, purely functional as opposed to decorative which I like, and they are usually arranged in straight lines, which I find far more visually interesting that clever curves and so on. I love straight lines in photographs.

Do you have an allotment garden?
I don’t, but I’m making a garden at the moment, and allotments are the principle inspiration, especially function over decoration, straight lines, and a certain unstructured approach!

Allotment garden, UK. Photo by Charlie Hopkinson, www.charliehopkinson.com

Photo by Charlie Hopkinson, www.charliehopkinson.com

If money were no object, would you travel the world shooting allotment gardens, or is there something special about them being in the UK?
I would travel the world doing just that. I recently went to Kenya, and came across the odd allotment here and there, and photographed them. They were fairly scruffy and unkempt. There’s nothing special about UK allotments as far as I’m concerned. Up to now, this has been an idle thing I have done here and there. I would, given time, make a more studied effort, but it would have to include the allotment gardener being photographed too.

Many thanks to Charlie Hopkinson for his beautiful photographs and this interview. Brief bio: Charlie has been a butcher, paint maker, artist, and soldier before he taught himself photography. Based in South London, he spends most of his time on location photographing well known subjects for a wide variety of magazines. Much of his personal work is centred around things that grow or once grew. His gardening hero is Henk Gerritsen, and his bible, is Henk’s Essay on Gardening. Photographic heroes include Jacques Henri Lartigue, and Diane Arbus. You can see more of Charlie’s work at his website, charliehopkinson.com.

To learn more about community and allotment gardens, visit the Therapeutic Landscapes Network website’s Community Gardens page.