—Anne Frank (1929-1945)
These soul-moving words are even more poignant when we consider that the high-spirited Anne Frank spent her early teen years hiding from the Nazis. She, her family and her father Otto’s business partner and family lived in cramped, makeshift quarters in an empty space at the back of Otto Frank’s company building in the Netherlands. Otto’s employees provided food and information about the outside world during their hiding.
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| Anne Frank |
These families spent two years without ever once stepping outside the dank, dark, sequestered portion of the building. Their only touch with nature was thanks to an attic window through which they could view the sky and a nearby chestnut tree. A lover of the outdoors, Anne nurtured herself by looking out at the heavens and observing the changes in that chestnut tree as the seasons passed. From her famous writings (The Diary of Anne Frank), we get the sense that this miniscule, microscopic brush with nature sustained her during this incredibly challenging time.
We joyful gardeners can identify. Sorry for the redundancy there. All gardeners are joyful, are we not? I never really thought about this until recently when Kris at Loveland Greenhouse shared something she’s observed over the years. “The people who come in here are joyful,” she says. “Gardeners are just joyful people.”
Agreed; but this observation might be due to more than a simple love of nature and/or wonder of watching seeds blossom and bloom. The secret may be in the dirt itself — primarily mycobacterium vaccae, a bacterium in the soil that has been found to trigger the release of serotonin and norepinephrine levels, those wonderful mood-boosters that many of us enjoy thanks to the marvels of pharamaceuticals.
This is too good to be true, I thought, when I saw a recent post on Yahoo. So I had to investigate. Naomi Sachs, a landscape designer and founding director of the Therapeutic Landscapes Network, reports that the antidepressant link to soil was accidentally discovered about ten years ago when Dr. Mary O’Brien, an oncologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, inoculated cancer patients with M. vaccae (pronounced “emm vah-kay”) in an effort to boost the immune system. Dr. O’Brien noticed that in addition to fewer cancer symptoms, her patients showed improved emotional health, vitality and cognitive function.
Dr. Christopher Lowry decided to put Dr. O’Brien’s findings to the test, this time with mice. In his experiments at Bristol University in the UK, he hypothesized that the body’s immune response to the bacterium causes the brain to produce serotonin. When he injected mice with the M. vaccae bacterium, Dr. Lowry found the mice showed lower stress levels, both physiologically and behaviorally.
The ultimate, eco-friendly antidepressant
These findings certainly put a scientific spin on the healthy effects of gardening that I’ve witessed with family members over the years (and which I myself gratefully enjoy). In addition to my Italian and Slovak grandmothers (see archived blogs), my father Victor Slezak turned to his beloved garden when he was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1972. Just a few months before his diagnosis, he appeared healthy and vibrant as he walked his bride-daughter (that would be me) down the aisle.
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| Victor and Rose - 1971 |
The early 1970s were light-years away from the life-saving medical advancements with which we are blessed today. The bad news was that there was no treatment available in his hometown of Middletown, Ohio. The good news was that some “new stuff” (chemotherapy) was available at the Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio.
Believe it or not, chemo was more brutal in those days. For five years, my dad traveled back and forth (with the help of numerous family and friends who drove him) to OSU. Each treatment would send him to bed for almost a week of chronic vomiting. After those five long years, he was in remission. The wonderful docs at OSU had saved his physical life. Gardening had saved his mental/emotional life.
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| Victor Slezak |
On his good days, and even not-so-good, my father found peace and contentment in his quarter-acre garden. Like his Slovak parents before him, he tenderly nurtured beautiful beds of vegetables, herbs and flowers. He even constructed a grape arbor and planted enough grapes that eventually grew to a magnificent ‘umbrella’ under which he and my mother would sit and enjoy the gifts of Mother Nature. Years later, he would do so with his precious grandchildren.
During the winter months, just the thought of his next garden sustained him. He studied seed catalogues, methodically ordering what he would need to bring his summer vision to life. When those seeds arrived, he was like a kid at Christmas as he lovingly planted them in little Styrofoam cups and lined them up on windowsills and under grow lights.
So while his playing in the soil may have, indeed, had an antidepressant effect during the growing season, perhaps the mere anticipation of that garden was therapeutic — similar to what Anne Frank experienced as she enjoyed the seasonal changes of that chestnut tree.
Can you dig it?
From Anne’s writings, it appears that she never succumbed to depression. She never gave up hope. . .
“I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.”
This could have been Victor Slezak’s mantra. I truly never heard my dad complain about the medical challenges that he encountered — even through a second round with the dreaded CA, this time with colon cancer that resulted in surgery and a colostomy bag. Once again, his garden provided a peaceful retreat that, coupled with his Catholic faith, sustained him until he died at age 62 in 1983.
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| Just dig in! |
Joyful thoughts of my father, the inspirational words of Anne Frank and all these scientific findings about the ultimate, eco-friendly antidepressant (aka good ole, dirty soil) just make me want to go out and play in the garden. To quote a phrase from my teen years. . . Can you dig it?
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