As wider restrictions have come into place, the opportunity to get out and about has lessened, though the appeal of the spring sunshine has grown. Tending to plants, growing vegetables and digging in the dirt can have a huge impact on boosting your mental wellbeing, so getting out into the garden during these constricted times could do you a world of good.

It reduces stress

Anxiety and tension have never been as widespread as right now, with the uncertainty of the future combined with the need to enforce social distancing leading to a stressful time for many. Studies have found that getting out into the garden can actually help in reducing mental strain, with one analysis suggesting that 30 minutes of gardening can lead to a drop in cortisol levels, the hormone associated with stress.

You can grow your own food

With spring firmly in its grasp, the weather has brightened and the time to sow your seeds has come. The ability to grow your own food is not confined to those with a large plot and can be done both inside and out depending on what you’re looking to grow.

This can be a great way of getting children involved in the process of gardening as well as the chance for them to try new foods, with the pride from growing their own translating into a desire to eat what they’ve cultivated.

There are physical benefits too

Gardening has been known to improve the strength in your hands, enhance your sleep so that your nights pass easier and can also strengthen your heart. As it’s considered a moderate-intensity exercise, you’re able to burn around 330 calories by doing just one hour of light gardening which is more than walking at a moderate pace for the same amount of time, while only 30 minutes of moderate-level physical activity most days of the week can also prevent and control high blood pressure.

Attracting birds to the garden

Your garden isn’t just a space to watch flowers bloom, it can also offer sanctuary to a variety of species. Birds will visit your garden, no matter its size or proximity to a city, so long as there is plenty of food available and the garden is as bird friendly as possible.

Set up some feeders to encourage birds to visit your garden, while dense cover and nesting sites will entice nesting dunnocks, robins and wrens.

Growing inside

Even if you’re confined to the indoors, there are a multitude of ways that you can develop a green thumb and cultivate plants inside, so much so that you’ll soon have green spaces throughout your home

An indoor garden can take up as much room as you’re willing to give it. Plants don’t need to take up much space if you haven’t got much to spare; a windowsill will do if that’s what you’ve got available. Growing plants of all kinds, even tomato gardening can be done on a windowsill or even on a table.

If you’re looking to grow larger plants then you may want to set up an area specifically for the inside garden, as either a table or bench. This is best done in an area with tile flooring in order to catch the unavoidable drops of water, though layering the area with a sheet beforehand could help if there’s nowhere else available.

Shelving can provide a lot of room for planting whilst taking up little real space; perfect for if your living arrangements don’t provide a lot of spare room. If you do choose shelving as your way to brighten your space, make sure that enough light reaches your plants to ensure that they survive which might require a separate light for each shelf to make sure that they thrive.

Artificial helpers

For those of us who are convinced we simply don't have green fingers and are more of a threat to plantlife, the market has been brightened considerably with the introduction of more realistic artificial plants that still give the same sense of nature and cheerfulness, without the inevitable gloom of having to throw away a dead plant and having to start all over again.