Allotment gardening and health: a comparative survey among allotment gardeners and their neighbors without an allotment

Background: The potential contribution of allotment gardens to a healthy and active life-style is increasingly recognized, especially for elderly populations. However, few studies have empirically examined beneficial effects of allotment gardening. In the present study the health, well-being and physical activity of older and younger allotment gardeners was compared to that of controls without an allotment. Methods: A survey was conducted among 121 members of 12 allotment sites in the Netherlands and a control group of 63 respondents without an allotment garden living next to the home addresses of allotment gardeners. The survey included five self-reported health measures (perceived general health, acute health complaints, physical constraints, chronic illnesses, and consultations with GP), four self-reported well-being measures (stress, life satisfaction, loneliness, and social contacts with friends) and one measure assessing self-reported levels of physical activity in summer. Respondents were divided into a younger and older group at the median of 62 years which equals the average retirement age in the Netherlands. Results: After adjusting for income, education level, gender, stressful life events, physical activity in winter, and access to a garden at home as covariates, both younger and older allotment gardeners reported higher levels of physical activity during the summer than neighbors in corresponding age categories. The impacts of allotment gardening on health and well-being were moderated by age. Allotment gardeners of 62 years and older scored significantly or marginally better on all measures of health and well-being than neighbors in the same age category. Health and well-being of younger allotment gardeners did not differ from younger neighbors. The greater health and well-being benefits of allotment gardening for older gardeners may be related to the finding that older allotment gardeners were more oriented towards gardening and being active, and less towards passive relaxation. Conclusions: These findings are consistent with the notion that having an allotment garden may promote an active life-style and contribute to healthy aging. However, the findings may be limited by self selection and additional research is needed to confirm and extend the current findings. Background Allotment gardens originated in Europe during the 18 century when plots of land were made available to poor laborers for the production of vegetables and fruits [1]. Nowadays, there are an estimated three million individual allotment gardens across Europe, which serve a variety of purposes for diverse populations [2]. Allotment gardens are a subtype of the more general category of community gardens, which include, broadly speaking, any piece of land gardened by a group of people [3]. A key characteristic of allotment gardens is that parcels of land are tended individually by plot holders and their families, contrary to shared or common types of community gardens where the overall area is tended collectively. Allotment gardens and other types of community gardens are increasingly recognized for their potential to promote health and well-being in urban communities * Correspondence: [email protected] Alterra Wageningen UR, PO Box 47, NL-6700 AA Wageningen, the Netherlands Full list of author information is available at the end of the article van den Berg et al. Environmental Health 2010, 9:74 http://www.ehjournal.net/content/9/1/74 © 2010 van den Berg et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. [4,5]. Among other things, allotment sites have been claimed to provide urban residents with opportunities to unwind from stress, interact with other members of their community, and engage in physical activity [6]. These alleged health benefits of allotment gardens receive some indirect support from epidemiological studies which have consistently shown positive relationships between urban green space and people’s health and well-being [7-13]. However, it is not clear to what extent these relationships hold for allotment sites, which constitute a special kind of urban green space with a semi-public character and tight social organization. Therefore, it is important to examine health benefits of allotment gardens directly among allotment gardeners. Thus far, empirical research among allotment gardeners has been primarily qualitative or descriptive. The findings have consistently shown that allotment gardens, like other types of community gardens, are perceived to improve general health conditions as well as to provide specific benefits related to recovery from stress, increased life satisfaction, more social contacts, and increased activity levels [14-18]. A recent field experiment among 30 allotment gardeners provides some initial evidence for the frequently cited stress-reducing effects of allotment gardening. After half an hour of gardening on the allotment, elevated salivary cortisol levels decreased by 22 percent, against a decrease of 11 percent in a control group assigned to a passive indoor reading task [19]. Although allotment sites are becoming more diverse in their ethnic and socio-demographic composition, the majority of allotment gardeners in the Netherlands and other countries are still pensioners [20-22]. The available literature suggests that allotment gardens may be especially beneficial for this older age group [23,24]. A qualitative longitudinal study in northern England describes in detail how older allotment gardeners gain a strong sense of achievement, satisfaction and aesthetic pleasure from their gardening activities. Based on these findings, the authors suggest that allotment gardens “have the potential to make a significant contribution to the healthy aging agenda” [24]. These notions are further supported by randomized intervention studies among institutionalized elderly which have found significant improvements in cognitive functioning and emotional well-being after a brief stay in the nursing home’s garden [25,26]. Because research on allotment gardening has not included control groups, it is unclear whether allotment gardeners (young or old) are healthier than comparable groups without an allotment. A survey among members of a horticultural society and other social and community groups in the Midwestern United States suggests that gardening can lead to reliable differences in health and well-being. Home gardeners, the majority of whom were past retirement age, rated their overall health, physical activity, and life satisfaction higher than a matched group of non-gardeners [27]. For example, 16 percent of gardeners rated their health as excellent, compared to only 9 percent of matched non-gardeners. Recent longitudinal studies in Sweden have compared the health of leisure home owners to that of non-owners of leisure homes. These studies found that men who owned a leisure home were less likely to suffer premature departure from the paid labor force due to early retirement for health reasons [28] or early death [29]. The findings of these controlled studies among home gardeners and owners of leisure homes are of considerable interest, but it remains to be seen whether they can be generalized to allotment gardeners. In sum, the evidence for health benefits of allotment gardens is suggestive but not sufficient to infer that allotment gardeners are healthier than comparable groups without an allotment. The main purpose of the present study was to directly compare the health, wellbeing and physical activity of allotment gardeners to that of controls without an allotment garden. We conducted a survey among 121 members of 12 allotment sites in the Netherlands and a control group of 63 respondents living next to the home addresses of allotment gardeners from the same sites. We hypothesized that allotment gardeners, as compared to those without an allotment, would report better health and well-being, as well as higher levels of physical activity during the summer (when the gardening season is in full swing). We also predicted that health benefits of having an allotment garden would be stronger for older respondents.