While the little hits of dopamine that come from scrolling on our phones or watching TV are nice in the moment, it doesn’t last long after the screen turns off. Mindful gardening is a practice that allows you to slow down and enjoy the fruits of your labour for the long run.
Wherever you go, there’s a little screen ready for you to turn to the second you feel bored, need a distraction, or want to procrastinate. It’s not often that we sit with our thoughts or do an activity without something constantly entertaining us.
Most of us are addicted to these little dopamine hits our phones give us, whether we’re aware of it or not. I’ve been there, even as someone who has always tried to limit their screen time.
Gardening has become one of the best ways for me to get away from the digital world, take some time for myself, and give myself a healthy mental health boost.
It’s a little ironic for me to talk about this on internet, as I can almost guarantee you’re looking at this post after finding it through scrolling or clicking. But it’s all about balance right!
Let me show you how you can implement mindful gardening in your own life.
What is a Dopamine Addiction?
If you spend time on the internet, specifically on social media, chances are you’ve heard the term dopamine addition by now. While it might be a buzzword used to sell products or courses, reliance on (and even addiction to) technology is a real phenomenon in our increasingly digital world.
Dopamine is often referred to as the feel-good hormone because it creates feelings of pleasure and affects things like mood and motivation. It’s part of the reward system in our brains, so when we do something like exercise or eat certain foods, dopamine is released.
However, the way we’ve come to use technology in our modern day overstimulates our dopamine pathways and dysregulates this reward system. Those funny Instagram videos also cause dopamine to be released.
While the term dopamine addiction might not be medically accurate, this does explain why so many people find themselves unable to put down their phones. We can’t get enough of these quick dopamine hits.
As a parent, I see this a lot in children, especially kids that are neurodivergent. Newer TV shows and online videos are so fast-paced. Kids today can barely sit through older shows like Sesame Street because the skits in them are long and slow. They just don’t stimulate the brain.
And the same goes for adults. If you’ve ever felt yourself struggling to read a book or even to sit through a full-length movie, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Many of us are experiencing this shortened attention span and reliance on instant gratification.
The Rising Tech Addiction Problem
I’m certainly not the first to observe that in our modern world, there is an increasing problem with screen addiction. Whether watching videos on social media or streaming TV shows, spending time looking at a screen creates a high that we crave.
No matter what, there’s a payoff from screen time. Maybe it’s the laugh you get from a joke in a sitcom or the information you learn from reading the news. But there’s also a crash afterward as your body tries to reset and find balance.
It’s especially easy to notice in kids. My son will spend a morning having fun playing video games with his friends, and then a few hours later, he feels really low.
Us adults experience this too, spending hours scrolling on social media yet not being able to hold a conversation in real life. It’s become hard to stay present and not pick up our phones.
I see it everywhere. When I travelled through Mexico, I couldn’t help noticing that even in the most beautiful place, people were staring at their phones rather than the environment around them. Here, on the SkyTrain, most people look down at their phones instead of out the window.
This constant connection to technology is negatively impacting our brains. Not only is it addictive, but it also impacts our mood, our well-being, and, ultimately, our ability to focus and be mindful.
Finding Dopamine Through Gardening
The good news is gardening also releases dopamine. But unlike scrolling through Instagram or binge-watching Netflix, gardening provides a natural way to boost dopamine, and it causes a slower release of the feel-good hormone.
Using your hands to work in your garden or tend to your house plants allows you to slow down and tap into your senses. Feeling the sunshine and dirt or smelling your fresh-grown herbs helps to rewire the reward system in your brain.
As opposed to the instant gratification of watching short videos on your phone, gardening forces you to participate in delayed gratification. You have to wait weeks, months, or even a year for a seed to grow into a flower, but when it does, there’s nothing more rewarding.
If you’ve ever heard of the marshmallow experiment, you’ll be familiar with the idea of instant versus delayed gratification.
The study involved giving children a marshmallow and leaving them alone for ten minutes. The kids were told they could either eat the marshmallow or, if they waited, they could have two marshmallows. With no understanding of delayed gratification, most of the kids ate the single marshmallow.
But as adults, we know that delaying gratification produces better results. Two marshmallows are better than one, so to speak. And gardening helps us practice this by taking the time to nurture and tend to plants that will eventually produce a rewarding harvest.
Mindful Gardening Techniques
Though I began gardening to heal chronic pain rather than as a means to address my technology use, over the years, I’ve learned that gardening is an incredible way to practice mindfulness.
Not only does it help me feel grounded and connected to nature, but it’s also helped me become more in tune with my own body and mind. If you’re looking for ways to bring mindfulness into your own gardening routine, here are a few ways to start.
Using Your Five Senses
The five senses aren’t just a concept we teach to kindergarteners. They’re also part of one of the most effective grounding practices. If you’ve done any work with mindfulness, whether it be for trauma, anxiety, or simply to feel more present, you’re probably very familiar with this technique.
It’s as simple as taking a few moments to connect with each sense. Ask yourself, “What do I see, smell, hear, feel, and taste?”
Simply identifying each one of these sensations can help bring you back into your body and out of whatever triggered state you might be experiencing. I find this is also a nice way to slow down, really noticing and appreciating the little things in life — and in my garden.
For more details on how I use the five senses, check out this post.
Do Tasks Intentionally
Another key part of mindfulness is being intentional. When it comes to gardening, this can involve completing one task at a time and focusing on work that is planned and purposeful.
I’ll be honest: this technique does not come naturally to me. I often head into the garden to work on one project and find myself starting more and more tasks along the way, on a sort of autopilot mode.
Instead, I’m working on slowing down and choosing one task to work on at a time. Even if I get off track, I try to return to my intended task.
It takes practice to keep focused like this and essentially delay the gratification of finishing other tasks, but it’s become a helpful way to pace myself and be present while I’m out in the garden.
Observe and Reflect
If you’ve listened to any of my talks, you’ll remember hearing about my favourite way to practice observation and reflection—my morning garden walks.
I first got the idea from Brian Brett’s book Trauma Farm. He writes about going for walks in his garden each morning, wearing nothing but his gumboots.
While you don’t have to walk around butt naked like Brett, garden walks are a great way to connect with your plants and spend time noticing small daily changes. You can spend just five minutes walking each morning while you drink your coffee.
No matter what the season, I promise there’s lots to see. I love taking this time to appreciate my garden, and these leisurely strolls often help me notice beauty that’s easy to overlook.
These walks can help your garden’s health, too. You might find a pest or disease that’s starting to get out of control or some newly ripened fruit that you can harvest before the critters get to it.
Journaling
It’s no secret that journaling and mindfulness go hand in hand. There’s something therapeutic about not only sitting with your thoughts but physically getting them out of your head and onto a page.
When I first started journaling, I struggled with perfectionism. I felt like each entry should be beautifully written and cohesive. But I quickly learned that the benefits of journaling come from allowing your thoughts to freely flow onto the page.
If you struggle with this like I did, I would suggest starting by making lists. I found it helpful to set a timer for five or ten minutes and just write down every thought that came to mind in point form.
You could even pair journaling with the five senses practice and write down what you’re seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, and feeling. If journaling is something you want to try and you’re looking for more ways to incorporate it into your routine, I also have a full blog post on garden journaling.
Creating Rituals
For me, one of the most important parts of my mindfulness practice was to make it a habit. I was inspired by the book Atomic Habits, which talks about how small mico changes in your life create big results.
Back when I first started Garden Therapy as my rehabilitation project, I gave myself a goal to do one project each week for a year. It felt small and attainable, but by the end of the year, I had 52 completed projects.
This ritual I created allowed me to do something creative each week, whether it was a larger building or planting project or just spending a nice fall day trying mushroom foraging. I wrote about each of my little projects and that was the start of this website.
It’s true that the key to succeeding with your goals is making small changes to your habits. If you have a goal that you’ve been struggling to reach—whether you want to heal your phone addiction, start growing your own food, or even start a gardening blog—I highly suggest starting with just five minutes each day.
