Reading to plants helps me fight my anxiety

Could communicating with nature help improve your mental health?

It's Mental Health Awareness Week, and we're looking at some of the different methods and coping strategies people use to help manage their mental health.

People like Anastasia Loginova, who discovered last year that reading to plants helped her anxiety.

The Dutch Association of Botanical Gardens visited her art school in The Hague. “One of the directors gave a talk about how plants are intelligent beings you can communicate with,” says artist Anastasia, 31. “I’d never thought about it before, but as soon as she said that, something really spoke to me. I just knew: I want to read to plants.” 

Talking to plants is a pastime generally associated with older generations. Judi Dench declared her passion for trees last year, Prince Charles famously said, external that talking to plants was "very important", and king of the garden, Alan Titchmarsh, reluctantly confessed, external to speaking to his plants too.

There's some proof that speaking to plants can positively affect their growth - a 2009 experiment, external by the Royal Horticultural Society indicated that the effects of voices on tomato plants made a difference to the rate of growth, with women’s voices proving particularly successful. 

The retailer B&Q even started employing plant whisperers, external in 2015 to make sure their flora got the attention needed to reach their full potential.

Anastasia realised that reading to plants can benefit young people too – especially for those experiencing feelings of anxiety and poor concentration.

She felt like social media was making her mind restless. “We now spend most of our days looking at our phones, constantly being distracted and switching between apps’, says Anastasia. "It’s like being a drug addict. When I go on my Instagram I’m scrolling and scrolling, but I’m not getting the high I’m looking for.”

Anastasia also felt like her concentration span had been diminishing. “If I tried reading a book this time last year, I would drop it after twenty pages,” she says.

The link between social media and mental health has also been acknowledged. Facebook last year admitted, external that use of its platform could pose a risk, while in a Royal Society for Public Health study, external, young people named Instagram as the social media platform that had the most negative impact on their health and wellbeing.

Studies suggest anxiety is generally on the rise, external amongst the young, with concerns, external about job prospects, self-confidence, and standards of living considered to be key factors behind mental health struggles. 

Anastasia's idea to read to plants was born as a performance art project, though. She was granted a residency at the Leiden Botanical Garden, with six weeks to read her chosen book – Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina - in her native Russian.

Her project drew audiences as people came to listen. “A lot of people told me I provided them time to just be, and meditate, and listen to the sounds.” The performance attracted national, and then international, media coverage. She has since read to plants again at Mediamatic, a cultural institution in Amsterdam. 

Her plan was to read all 861 pages of Tolstoy’s high-society drama to the plants in six weeks. She chose a spot in the garden, and then, “I just sat down and started to read.”

Instead of rushing to finish the book, she read slowly, and sometimes, she didn’t read at all. 

“It was one of the first times in my life that I was really still," she says. "Not thinking and not doing. Just being. I’ve never had that before. It was almost like meditation. I think a lot of meditation tries to get you into this same space. I’ve tried to meditate for years and it’s always really hard. But in the garden it happened for me easily and instantly.” 

She describes is as “such a calming experience. I wish everybody would get to experience this silence and stillness, this calmness.” 

While there’s little evidence that reading to plants is scientifically good for you, studies suggest, external that access to green spaces can reduce both obesity and depression, while living near nature has been proven to help both men, external and women, external live longer. Wellness trends, like forest bathing, external, a Japanese practice which encourages people to take a walk in natural forests, are beginning to embrace the view that your brain is better in nature.

“For me, this has been the best remedy for the feeling of restlessness I was suffering before," says Anastasia. "I was able to let go of my anxieties and find a stillness inside that left me feeling truly calm and fulfilled.” 

She has also experienced another benefit: “I can now read for an hour and a half non-stop. I’ve increased my concentration span for sure.” 

You might think of gardening as your granny’s hobby, but Instagram feeds are full of cacti arrangements and bright florals, and there are about 32 million, external posts with the #garden hashtag on the platform. Experts say that young people are using nature to express themselves on the app.

Maybe it’s time to take it a step further and start engaging? Grab yourself a book and give it a try.

Originally published 16 February 2018.

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