Slow Gardening for a Fast World

🌿In a world that moves faster than your compost bin in summer, it’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind, in work, in life, in your garden.

But most good things (especially the green ones) don’t thrive under pressure. They thrive under patience. Under mulch. And under a slower, more seasonal pace.

This post is a gentle rebellion against hustle culture - with muddy boots and a watering can. Because even just five minutes in the garden can shift your nervous system, your mood, and your mindset.

Here’s how.

🌱 The Science Behind Slowing Down

🧠 Hands in Soil = Microbial Serotonin

There’s a bacteria found in healthy garden soil called Mycobacterium vaccae, and interacting with it has been shown to stimulate the production of serotonin - the "feel-good" neurotransmitter that stabilises mood and promotes wellbeing. You don’t need to get fancy. Just weeding with your bare hands or repotting something can literally lift your spirits, biologically.

Bonus fact: Gardeners have been found to have lower cortisol levels (stress hormones) and better sleep patterns than non-gardeners. Dirt therapy is real.

🌤️ Exposure to Natural Light = Better Sleep & Mood

Spending time outdoors, even briefly, helps regulate your circadian rhythm by increasing melatonin production at night and serotonin during the day. Gardeners who get sunlight early in the day often sleep better, feel more balanced, and experience fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression. Even pulling a few weeds before breakfast can shift your whole day.

🧘‍♀️ Gardening Reduces Rumination (Overthinking)

Studies show that gardening decreases activity in the parts of the brain associated with rumination - the exhausting, repetitive thinking loops that fuel anxiety and depression. Focused tasks like sowing, planting, or harvesting gently redirect attention away from those thought spirals and into the present moment. It's mindfulness, but with dirt under your nails.

🔁 Repetition = Meditative Rhythm

Watering, weeding, deadheading, tying up tomato vines - these gentle, rhythmic movements bring us into a state of flow. They're small tasks with clear beginnings and endings, which is deeply comforting to the human brain.

Regular time in the garden mimics mindfulness practice - your breath slows, your mind quiets, and the overthinking takes a break.

✨ Tiny Wins = Dopamine Hits

Watching a seed sprout, seeing a self-sown calendula reappear, harvesting and delightedly munching a single snow pea - these moments activate the brain’s reward system. They're the little jolts of “I did a thing!” that we often overlook.

Unlike the big goals modern life tells us to chase, gardens reward small, consistent effort. They don’t care about your KPIs - they care that you remembered to water yesterday.

🌱 One Small Ritual Can Change Everything

You don’t need a big plan or a perfectly curated space. You just need one small thing to anchor you to something slower, gentler, and rooted.

Here are a few micro-rituals to try this week:

🧄 Plant something on a Sunday evening

Not to be productive, but to be present.

Tuck a clove of garlic into the soil, sprinkle some rocket seed, or repot a leggy herb.

It’s a symbolic reset - a quiet little “I’m still here” offering to your week ahead.

🌼 Harvest one herb every week and make a tea

Chamomile, lemon balm, tulsi, mint - whatever’s on hand. And it doesn't need to be much, just a few leaves will do. Brew a quiet cup, light a candle, and do nothing else while you drink it.

Be with the taste. The steam. The knowledge that something you grew is now inside you, nourishing your cells. 

🦶 Walk barefoot in the garden

Yes, even if it’s cold. Especially if it’s cold.

Grounding through the soles of your feet is a proven nervous system reset. Combine it with candlelight or moonlight, and you’ve got yourself a backyard ritual that borders on magic.

🛏️ What If You’re Too Tired?

Then don’t garden. Just sit in the garden. Light a candle.

Let your body rest in the space you’ve created. Let the plants carry on without you for a while. Watch the way the breeze dances through the lettuce leaves. That counts too.

And if it’s pouring rain, or frozen, or dark by 4:30?

Pot up a single herb indoors. Light that candle anyway. Sketch your spring garden on the back of an envelope.

Water the worm farm. Move one pot to a sunnier position.

Dream of spring flowers.

That.all.counts.

✨This is Gardening for Nervous Systems✨

You don’t have to “stay on top of it.”

You don’t have to plant every seed or prune every vine.

What your garden - and your soul - need most right now might just be to go slow.

So reject hustle culture. Embrace decomposition. Be the mulch.

Let the radishes take their time. Let yourself take yours.

You don’t have to grow everything. You just have to begin. 🌙