key: cord-0945086-94v0xhzy
authors: Sia, Angelia; Yok, Tan Puay; Meng, John Wong Chee; Araib, Sophianne; Foong, Ang Wee; Er, Kenneth Boon Hwee
title: The impact of gardening on mental resilience in times of stress: A case study during the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore
date: 2021-12-18
journal: Urban For Urban Green
DOI: 10.1016/j.ufug.2021.127448
sha: 323ba4129a9abed71d3dbea9f3430d2d77f06dbc
doc_id: 945086
cord_uid: 94v0xhzy

To curb the spread of Covid-19, Singapore, like other cities, had to impose movement restriction and social distancing measures that may affect the well-being of its residents. In this paper, we assessed the potential benefits of gardening on the mental well-being of Singapore residents, based on the concept of mental resilience. We hypothesized that gardening activities promote mental resilience. A survey was administered on 8,786 participants of a “Gardening with Edibles” programme, measuring their mental resilience status, engagement in gardening activities and socio-demographic information. The mental resilience scores of participants who engaged in weekly gardening were compared with the scores derived from another survey conducted during the pandemic on an online community comprising demographically representative respondents with an interest on Covid-19 related community care. The results showed that the mental resilience of those who gardened was statistically significantly higher than the online community. Within the gardening group, those with more than one hour of weekly gardening time had significantly lower scores in in their total mental resilience, and five out of seven resilience factors, “emotional regulation”, “relationship”, “confidence”, “positive thinking” and “spirituality”, compared to those with more weekly gardening time, showing that the efficacy of the mediating effects may peak at a weekly gardening time of between one to four hours. Home gardening may be an effective way for people living in densely populated cities to interact with nature and build mental resilience during the pandemic.

During the current pandemic, home gardening bloomed around the world . Strong cross-country interest in gardening was reported as lockdowns became more widespread (Lin et al., 2021) . Likewise, plant retail centres in Singapore reported an anecdotal increase in plant sales and Instagram posts related to home gardening saw many-fold increase in the number of followers (The Straits Times, 2020). Home gardening was not a widespread activity among the general population in Singapore due to their busy lifestyles (Newstex, 2014) . This change was likely attributed to more people picking up gardening as a hobby to keep themselves occupied, while being "confined". A related initiative, the "Gardening with Edibles" programme, was launched in June 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic by the National Parks Board (NParks), the national government agency responsible for nature conservation, veterinary care, and greenery and recreation in the city-state. The programme aimed to encourage the public to grow edible plants at home, to bring forth the benefits of health and well-being. Members of public who registered interest on NParks' website (https://www.nparks.gov.sg/gardening/gardening-with-edibles) during the specified timeframe would receive free packets of leafy and fruited vegetable seeds.. In conjunction with the seed distribution, NParks also provided a series of useful online resources and organised webinars on gardening.

The programme attracted participants who were interested in gardening, some of whom provided email addresses and consent to be contacted for future surveys This database of edible gardening registrants provided an opportunity to assess the possible effects of gardening on mental resilience, J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f which was undertaken through an online survey. Next, we obtained mental resilience data from another large online community survey (see Methods) . This allowed comparison of mental resilience scores of participants from the two surveys. The specific objectives were to assess: (1) if gardening showed increase mental resilience compared to the general community group; (2) if length of time spent in gardening activities influenced mental resilience; (3) the influence of different mental resilience constructs among gardeners; and (4) if socio-demographic variables like age and housing type influenced the relationship between gardening and mental resilience.

The "Gardening with Edibles" programme, launched in June 2020, was broadcasted nationally across the local news media (Goh, 2020) . Any resident in Singapore who was interested in receiving seed packets to grow edible plants at home could register by providing their email contact details on the NParks website. The programme attracted 324,000 registrants, of which 42,678 consented to be contacted for future surveys. The latter, comprising residents with interest in gardening, formed the target population of the Gardening with Edibles survey recruited through convenience sampling. The survey questionnaire was finalised after discussions with researchers from the Mind Science Centre who developed the mental resilience questions (Table 1 ). The usability and technical functionality of the electronic questionnaire was tested on a group of ten NParks' staff and friends before fielding the questionnaire between May and June 2021, when an email was sent to the target population with a secured link to the online survey.

Invitees were informed that the purpose of the survey was to assess the Gardening with Edibles initiative, and that participation was optional. The survey was conducted following the ESOMAR Guideline for Social Research (http://www.mrssingapore.org.sg/standards-overview/standards-codeof-professional-behaviour/) where respondents were assured that confidentiality of data will be maintained by de-linking identifying information from the survey data and provided the link (https://www.nparks.gov.sg/privacy-statement) which contained details on NParks' data protection policy. By competing the survey, respondents consented to NParks collecting and using the information for the study, and no further incentives were given. The survey was hosted on a government online platform and all responses were encrypted end-to-end and accessible only by the research team. There was neither follow-up e-mail nor reinforcements after the link was sent. The survey was closed after one month. The response rate of the survey was about 20 percent, with a total of 8,786 returns. Of the returned responses, 64 respondents (0.7%) indicated that they did not engage in gardening and 3,081 respondents (35.1%) did not complete the questions on the Mental Resilience Scale. Hence, only 5,705 respondents could be included in this study. Of these respondents, another 44 were excluded as they did not engage in gardening. This resulted in a remaining 5,661 respondents who are designated as the "Gardening group" in this study.

Online survey on respondents interested in Covid-19 related community care

The online survey was conducted jointly by the Mind Science Centre and the Community Care Buddy. The former is an academic centre for psychological research, education, and service with an emphasis on non-drug approach, under the National University Health System of Singapore, whereas the latter is a non-profit organization. The survey was hosted on the "I am a Community Care Buddy" website (https://iamaccb.sg/all-things-J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f ccb/) between 20 th May 2020 to 3 rd June 2020. The website provided content about mental wellness during the pandemic. Information on the survey was broadcasted nationally across the local news media through a joint press release, and disseminated to 3,256 respondents who had previously registered with the website to receive information on Covid-19 related community care. Any member of the public who visited the website during the period could take part in the online survey. The survey questionnaire, designed and tested by researchers from the Mind Science Centre, is described in the next section. A total of 1,849 responses was received and the participants, comprising members of the public from the general community, formed the Community group recruited through convenience sampling.

The outcome measure was a set of ten questions adapted from the validated Singapore Youth Resilience Scale (SYRSS), developed previously for the Singapore population and tested for internal consistency and convergent validity with the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, World Health Organisation Quality of Life (WHOQOL-BREF) and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) (Lim et al., 2011) . The ten items selected corresponded to seven resilience factors, "emotional regulation", "spirituality", "relationship", "confidence", "positive thinking", "control" and "flexibility" ( Table 2) . The SYRSS has a total 50 items, but the items on "commitment" and "positive self-image", which target youths, were not included in the current study. The 10-item mental resilience questions had good internal consistency, with Cronbach's alpha of 0.78 for the Gardening group and 0.81 for the Community group. The overall mental resilience score was computed by adding the scores in all the ten questions, and higher scores suggest higher mental resilience. Non-parametric tests were used in the analyses as the distributions of the Gardening and Community groups were not normal, based on the Shapiro-Wilk's test (p < 0.05). All analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 27. Alpha level of 0.05 was used as a level of statistical significance.

We used the Kruskal-Wallis H test, followed by pairwise Dunn's procedure of pairwise comparison with a Bonferroni adjustment to examine the effect of age on mental resilience in both groups. Then, we compared mental resilience scores between the Gardening group and Community group across age categories, using Mann-Whitney U test. We repeated the Kruskal-Wallis H test within the Gardening group, to examine the effects of age and housing type on gardening time.

Participants within the Gardening group were classified into four sub-groups based on their weekly gardening time, i.e., "< 1 hour", "1-4 hours", "4-8 hours" and "> 8 hours". Quade's rank analysis of covariance was used to determine if there were any significant differences in mental resilience scores across the four sub-groups with different weekly gardening time, controlling for age and housing type. Here, we first ranked all cases on mental resilience scores and covariates and ran a linear regression of the resulting ranks to obtain the unstandardized residuals. This is followed by a J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), using the residuals. We reported Welch and Games-Howell test statistics, as equal variances were not assumed. Finally, we repeated the Quade's rank analysis of covariance on the seven individual mental resilience factors across the four sub-groups with different weekly gardening time. Additionally, a Spearman's rank-order correlation was run to assess the relationship between the resilience factors and weekly gardening time.

The median age of the respondents in the Gardening Group was between 45-54 years. In comparison, the median age for the Community Group, was younger, 25-34 years. The distribution of respondents by housing type within the Gardening Group was 63.6% public apartment, 22.6% private apartment and 13.9% landed housing. This followed the national distribution trend on housing types, which was 78.6% public apartment, 16.2% private apartment and 5.0% landed housing. Information on housing type was not available for the Community Group. Within the Gardening Group, majority (51.99%) indicated that they spent 1-4 hours each week on gardening activities. The characteristics of the respondents in the two groups are summarised in Table 3 .

Within the Gardening group, mental resilience scores differed significantly among the age categories, H 2 (6) = 114.546, p < 0.001. Post hoc analysis showed that the scores of those aged >55 years (i.e., "55-64 years", "65-74 years" and ">74 years") had significantly higher scores than those aged <35 years (i.e., "25-34 years" and "<24 years"). Those "45-54 years" and "35-44 years" had significantly higher scores than the younger groups (i.e., "25-34 years" and "<24 years") ( Table 4 , Fig. 1 ). Similarly, within the Community group, mental resilience scores were also significantly different among the age categories, H 2 (6) = 76.181, p < 0.001. Post hoc analysis showed that the scores for "55-64 years", "65-74 years" were significantly higher than those <35 years (i.e., "25-34 years" and "<24 years"). Those "45-54 years" and "35-44 years" had significantly higher scores than the younger groups (i.e., "25-34 years" and "<24 years"). There were no significant differences between ">74 years" and any other groups (Table 5 , Fig. 2 ).

As the median ages of the two groups were different, comparative analysis was conducted across different age groups, rather than using the means of the two study populations. Results of the Mann-Whitney u test showed that mental resilience scores for the Gardening group were significantly higher, compared to the Community group, across all age categories. The largest differences were found in "25-34 years", "35-44 years" and ">74 years", as evidenced by the relatively larger effect sizes of 0.44, 0.34 and 0.39, respectively (Table 6 ).

Effects of age on weekly gardening time Within the Gardening group, weekly gardening time differed significantly among the age categories, H2(7) = 175.038, p < 0.001. Post hoc analysis showed that those aged >55 years (i.e., "55-64 years", "65-74 years" and ">74 years") spent significantly more time gardening each week than the younger groups (i.e., "35-44 years", "25-34 years" and "<24 years"). Those aged >65 years (i.e., "65-74 years" and ">74 years") spent significantly more time gardening each week than those aged 55-64 years ( Table 7) .

Within the Gardening group, weekly gardening time differed significantly among the housing types, H2(2) = 108.531, p < 0.001. Post hoc analysis showed that those residing landed housing spent significantly more time gardening each week than those residing in public and private apartments (Table 8) .

Quade's rank analysis of covariance, controlling for age and housing type, was run within the Gardening group to assess the differences among the four sub-groups with different weekly gardening time. The results showed that length of weekly gardening time had significant effects on mental resilience scores (Welch's F(3, 1507.654) = 16.072, p < 0.001). Post J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f hoc analysis showed that those with "<1-hour weekly gardening time" had significantly lower scores than all other three groups with more weekly gardening time. The sub-group with "1-4 hours weekly gardening time" was significantly lower than "> 8 hours", but no difference was found with "4-8 hours". There was also no significant difference found between "4-8 hours" and ">8 hours" ( Table 9 ).

Effects of weekly gardening time on mental resilience factors Similar analysis on the individual resilience factors showed that weekly gardening time had significant effect on "emotional regulation", "spirituality", "relationship", "confidence" and "positive thinking", but not on "control" and "flexibility". Post hoc analysis on these factors showed that the mean scores were significantly lower in the sub-group with the least weekly gardening time of "< 1 hour", than all the other sub-groups with more gardening time. For "relationship", the mean score was also significantly lower in the sub-group "1-4 hours", compared with the sub-groups with more gardening time. On the other hand, for "positive J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f thinking", scores for "<1 hour" was only significantly lower than "4-8 hours" and ">8 hours", but not "1-4 hours" (Table 10 ). The Spearman's rank-order correlation analysis showed that there were statistically significant, positive correlations between weekly gardening time and all the resilience factors, except for "control" (Table 11) .

Analysis showed that mental resilience scores were significantly different among housing types, H 2 (2) = 56.611, p < 0.001. Post hoc analysis showed that those living in "public apartment" had significantly lower score than those living in "private apartment" and "landed housing". There was no significant difference between those living in "private apartment" in comparison with "landed housing" (Table 12) .

The World Health Organisation defines well-being as "the state in which an individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with normal stresses of life, can work productively, and is able to make a contribution to his or her own community". Mental resilience and well-being are very much interrelated, as evidenced by a recent study which found that resilience, a developmental characteristic that can be enhanced through interventions, played a buffering role in the mental health and perceived stress on Slovene adults at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak (Kavčič et al., 2020) . Another J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f study on respondents from nine countries also found that psychological resilience was an important factor that predicted the likelihood of showing symptoms of depression and/or anxiety during the pandemic . Earlier studies had focused on the positive relationship between gardening and mental well-being (Koay and Dillon, 2020; de Bell et al., 2020; Chalmin-Pui et al., 2021) , with limited evidence on the role of gardening on mental resilience. This present study provides preliminary evidence on the positive association between gardening and mental resilience in Singapore.

It is generally acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the lifestyles of people across the world significantly, and for a prolonged period. Like other cities, Singapore's various safe management measures to curb the spread of the disease, while being relatively successful, may have some adverse effect on the mental well-being of people. Gardening is a cost-effective activity and brings multiple benefits, ranging from increasing physical activity to improving mental well-being through the nurturing of plants. The Gardening with Edibles initiative involves the distribution of free seeds and provision of online resources on home gardening. Among those who responded in the survey, majority (99.23 %) indicated that they engaged in weekly gardening activities after receiving the seeds, showing that the programme has increased interest in gardening.

Analysis of mental resilience scores across age categories within the Community and Gardening groups showed that older participants in the age categories "55-64 years" and "65-74 years" had higher mental resilience than those in the younger age categories. This is consistent with a previous J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f study which found that younger people had higher odds of depression and anxiety symptoms than older people during the pandemic, despite being less severely hit by the disease, with generally milder physical symptoms . This could be partly attributed to older individuals having greater mental resilience to begin with, hence they are better able to regulate their emotions and find solutions to their problems (Gooding et al., 2012) . Interestingly, participants ">74 years" in the Gardening group also had significantly higher mental resilience than the younger participants, in contrast with the trend in the Community group which showed a decline in mental resilience for those in the ">74 years" age category. From our analysis of the Gardening group, we found that those ">74 years" spent significantly more time gardening each week than those who were younger.

This suggested that gardening may be an activity that promotes mental resilience in seniors who are advanced in age. Chalmin-Pui et al. (2021) found that perceived stress was significantly lower for individuals in the United Kingdom living in semi-detached or detached houses, compared to those living in flats. We had consistent findings in the present study  mental resilience scores and gardening time were lower in participants living in public apartments. This reflects the quantum of space for gardening as landed housing and private apartments typically correspond with the presence of outdoor gardens and balconies in Singapore respectively. While some public apartments do have balconies, most public apartments have limited gardening space with the corridors linking the apartment units serving partially for gardening. A potential implication of this finding is for city planners to review structural provisions to capitalize on the current interest in gardening, as we enter a future with potentially more pandemics and other public health crises (Lin et al., 2021) , to provide diverse gardening space in housing, regardless of floor J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f area, consistent with the recommendation by other researchers, for instance, by Kim and Ohara (2010) . This is also aligned with the concerted effort to optimise green spaces for community and allotment gardens within the public housing estates in Singapore (Er et al., 2016) .

Interestingly, a previous study in the Netherlands found that people who were between 45 and 54 years old and residing with surrounding green spaces had worse mental health, and this was explained by the fact that people in this age group, while having the means to buy a house in a green area, lack the opportunity to make use of the green space because of a busy job and family life (Bos et al. 2016 ). Our study shows that gardening associates positively with increased mental resilience. The positive trend is consistent across all age categories, including those between 45 and 54 years old, validating the importance of active forms of engagement with nature. Higher mental resilience translates to the ability to better cope with stress during challenging times (De Terte and Stephens, 2014) . Findings from the present study also corroborates with the study by reporting the effects of gardening in lowering psychopathological distress through decreased COVID-19 related distress.

Our results further showed that mental resilience and several resilience factors peaked at a weekly gardening time of between 1-4 hours. Several other studies have also investigated the efficacy of the varying doses of nature and well-being. A recent study on the benefits of gardening during COVID-19 pandemic found that a gardening frequency of at least 2-3 times a week corresponded with perceived health benefits (Chalmin-Pui et al., 2021), although Wood et al. (2015) did not report any difference in time spent or tenure of allotment gardening on improving self-esteem and mood of J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f gardeners. Other studies, not specifically targeted at gardening, also provided similar evidence of varying doses of exposure to nature. For example, White et al. (2019) showed that a weekly dose of at least two hours in nature promotes well-being outcomes, while reported that visits to outdoor green spaces for 30 mins or more a week could reduce the population prevalence of depression and high blood pressure by up to 7% and 9% respectively.

How might gardening contribute towards increased mental resilience? In this study, we found that there were significant correlations with "relationship", "emotional regulation", "confidence", "spirituality" and "positive thinking", with "relationship" and "emotional regulation" having the strongest effects. This could be attributed to several reasons. First, gardening has been shown to sustain engagement with nature, thereby bringing about attention restoration and reduced stress levels (Kapan, 1973; Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989) . Ng et al. (2018) , in their study on effects of therapeutic horticulture, a form of gardening, on older adults found a reduction in interleukin-6, a cytokine associated with depression, in participants, further validating the restorative benefits of the activity. This can translate to reduction in anxiety and improved cognitive functioning, thereby better emotional regulation (Wood et al., 2015; , a protective factor in times of stress . Second, the connection with nature through gardening at home (in the balcony or home garden) or in an allotment plot can help to counter the temporary loss of human-nature interactions, i.e. "extinction of experience" during periods of home confinement and restriction of activities.

The act of gardening provides a welcomed break or "being away" from the routine of desk-bound working from home and when outdoor activities are restricted. The activity offers cues that connect gardeners with their personal history and instil awe in the wonders of nature. Examples include J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f witnessing the phenological cycles of plants from seed to flower and fruit, visits by pollinators like birds, bees and butterflies to flowers. These intimate gardener-nature interactions within an individual's home can enhance positive identity to the garden and bring about a sense of spirituality (Bernardini and Irvine, 2007) . Third, gardening promotes fascination, which in turn motivates the gardener to seek knowledge, exchange ideas and share one's development progress in gardening (Kaplan, 1973) . This, coupled with the sharing of fruits and produce from the garden with the family and friends, builds strong inter-personal relationships and bonds, leading to greater relationship . also found that while it might not be apparent that home gardeners valued social connection, they were likely to participate in other avenues of relationship building, such as via social learning sources or by sharing food with others. It should be noted that this benefit would probably be more strongly manifested amongst community gardeners than individual gardeners (Koay and Dillon, 2020), as shown in a previous study where respondents who engaged in allotment gardening at a low frequency and short duration were found to report similar levels of health as those who did so regularly and for longer duration . Additionally, the satisfaction of seeing one's garden take shape and the growth of the plants can instil confidence and positive thinking, thereby enhancing self-esteem (Wood et al., 2015; de Bell et al., 2020; Chalmin-Pui et al., 2021) . Finally, gardening involves physical activity, and this may trigger the release of protective neurotrophic factors, giving rise to the positive outcomes observed. For example, a study by Park et al. (2019) showed that gardening intervention significantly increased levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in elderly participants after the activity. BDNF is a key protein that is upregulated after exercise and can promote cell proliferation. It may play a role in emotional regulation, since BDNF levels were found to be reduced in untreated patients with major depressive disorders, and restored with antidepressant treatment (Lee & Kim, 2010). These various pathways to mental resilience are summarised in Fig. 3 .

However, gardening is not without uncertainties. The successful sowing of seeds and fruiting of edible plants in a garden are dependent on many other environmental factors such as weather and presence of pollinator and are not entirely within the gardener's control. This may be the reason why we did not find any association between gardening and the mental resilience factor of "control" and "flexibility". While this may mirror the feeling of helplessness during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is compensated by the more significant positive effects of gardening on the other factors of mental resilience.

The study has several limitations. The mental resilience score of the Community group was derived from the online survey conducted by the Mind Science Centre. Online surveys have inherent biasedness (Greenacre, 2016) , but the relatively large sample size of 1,849 increased the representativeness of the population. The response rate of the "Gardening with Edibles" survey was also relatively low. However, this is expected of online surveys, especially in consideration that no reminders were sent and there were no further incentives offered for survey participation. The comparison of the two surveys which were conducted one year apart was a study limitation, as time may have some effect on the outcome measured.

However, this limitation was moderated by the fact that both surveys were conducted using the same methodology, convenience sampling and online, within the context of the same pandemic and government measures. The prolonged Covid-19 situation, evolvement of more potent variants of J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f the virus with increasing number of cases may not favour the mental resilience of the Gardening group (survey conducted one year later than the Community group). However, this may be compensated by the adaptation to the pandemic one year on. In addition, we applied nonparametric analysis methods, which do not make any assumptions of the distributions of the two groups under comparison, and characteristically have lower statistical power, to reduce the risk of drawing incorrect conclusions.

The study did not also consider efficacy of gardening compared with outdoor nature-based activities. This may be further examined. Future studies using within-subject design may be conducted to ascertain the pathways through which gardening promotes mental well-being and resilience and the effect sizes.

Singapore was not conceived to have a widespread home gardening culture due to space constraints in residences. There has, however, been a concerted effort over the years to optimise green spaces, including community and allotment gardens. With an anticipated increase in gardening interest and growing evidence of benefits of gardening, home gardening may be the alternative way for people to receive the associated benefits. This, coupled with the restrictions in activities during the Covid-19 pandemic, has given rise to initiatives such as the "Gardening with Edibles" programme to promote home gardening, and potentially build resilience into J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f health and food systems in the light of future pandemics (Niala, 2020) . This study is significant in providing the evidence that gardening may increase mental resilience through the pathways of fostering "emotional regulation", "relationship", "confidence", "positive thinking" and "spirituality", with an efficacious weekly dose of between 1-4 hours. The findings may be potentially applicable to other tropical cities, as urbanites worldwide continue to find ways to cope mentally with the stressors of city living and the current Covid-19 pandemic, notwithstanding . Table 1 

We hope you are enjoying the journey of growing your own fruits and vegetables! We would appreciate if you can take part in this survey to allow us to continue to improve and bring you more programmes as part of Singapore's vision of Growing our City in Nature. By submitting this form, you agree that NParks may collect and use for the purpose of our study on the Gardening with Edibles initiative. In the event of any publication regarding this study, your identity will remain confidential. Please visit our website at http://www.nparks.gov.sg/privacy-statement for further details on our data protection policy.

The current pandemic has affected our lives and resulted in some changes in our routines. On the bright side, we are spending more time with our family and engaging in activities such as gardening. As research has shown that participating in gardening enhances our mental wellbeing and emotional resilience, we would like to understand how you, as our participant of the Growing with Edibles programme, are coping during this period. The set of statements below, adapted from the Singapore Mental Health Resilience survey, is a simple scale that assesses your level of resilience. Please select the option which best describes how much you agree or disagree with each statement. (Please be assured that your answers will be kept confidential.) Statement 1

I am able to handle unpleasant emotions, like sadness, fear and anger. J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f 

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Gardening is beneficial for health: A meta-analysis

A room with a green view: the importance of nearby nature for mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic

Psychological Resilience as a Protective Factor for Depression and Anxiety Among the Public During the Outbreak of COVID-19

Are Community Gardening and Horticultural Interventions Beneficial for Psychosocial Well-Being? A Meta-Analysis

Evidence and theory for lower rates of depression in larger US urban areas

Perspectives on five decades of the urban greening of Singapore

Stay home, stay safe, stay green: The role of gardening activities on mental health during the Covid-19 home confinement. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening

Coronavirus: Seed sales soar as more of us become budding gardeners

Resilience in the face of stress: emotion regulation as a protective factor

Home gardening blooms around the world during coronavirus lockdowns

Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing

A case-control study of the health and well-being benefits of allotment gardening

This Gardening with Edibles programme 2020 was jointly funded by DBS Bank and Tote Board. The donors had no involvement with the study design; data collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. We thank the team from the National University of Singapore Mind Science Centre, Ms Mae Kng Keng Mui and Mr. Muhammad Nabil Syukri Bin Sach who shared the survey questions on mental resilience and data from the general community survey. We would also like to thank colleagues from the National Parks Board, who were involved in the Gardening with Edibles programme and survey, especially Ms Trina Chua, Mr. Zestin Soh, Ms