We need to apply ART (attention restoration theory) to our lives. Otherwise known as pottering about in the garden
From the Guardian, “Gardening nirvana”
As the General Election and its sturm und drang clamours around us, we are trying to hold fast to our curious interest in what it is that citizens really, truly value about their lives - and then imagine what kinds of power and politics, collective and individual, might be derived from these sources.
Thus we fixed on this beautiful Neon article about the power of gardening as salvation (and yes, we’ve covered gardening before). And in particular, because it seems to have an effect on our sense of time: reclaiming it back from a frantic, demanding age.
Many gardeners past and present have described the same experiences of switching off from their busy lives or troubles when they’re in the garden or yard. The garden and gardening are a retreat, an escape from daily pressures. People have told me that their garden becomes a ‘salvation’ and they would be bereft without it.
Switching off is not solely about not thinking – it is about the perception of time itself.
Gardeners usually say that time in the garden is shorter than it actually is; that planned hour simply slips away. The beginning and end of gardening depends on the tasks that day, or physical limitations such as darkness falling. In the process, time passes from objective clock time to subjective or nature’s time.
Tasks such as weeding or checking on progress are neverending; mowing the grass is episodic – it happens regularly, but each time the task is finite. Natural time relies on sunrise and sunset, and seasons, determined by something beyond ourselves. It is measured by the time it takes for seeds to germinate and become carrots or cornflowers, or the arrival of favourite birds.
Working with nature’s time disconnects me and other gardeners from externally imposed rhythms of activity punctuated by events such as commuting, meetings or meals.
Time standing still is integral to the psychological phenomenon called ‘flow’. Flow is a highly focused mental state associated with happiness, whereby people get carried along and become so absorbed in an activity that they don’t notice anything else, including the passage of time.
This description matches my experience in the garden. Flow puts the process of active engagement centre-stage, along with a blurring of the boundary between self and activity. The concept of flow might explain the attraction of the gardening experience, but it doesn’t tell us what draws people out into the garden in the first place, nor why so many end up hooked.
Perhaps the garden itself has a role to play: tempting us out to see what might have happened in our absence and what needs doing next. This makes the garden intriguing and fascinating, switching our mindset on to the natural environment.
In fact, ‘fascination’ is one aspect of attention restoration theory (ART), developed by the US environmental psychologists Rachel Kaplan and Stephen Kaplan, and introduced in their book The Experience of Nature (1989). ART describes how humans seem to be predisposed to engage with the natural world, and to find it relaxing or restorative.
ART is about what nature does for us, and thus speaks to this notion of getting hooked. Central to the theory is the idea that engaging with nature helps us recover from feeling mentally depleted or overloaded.
Nature captures our attention. Bees buzzing on lavender, rustling leaves, passing clouds or buds unfurling into flowers can ‘fascinate’ us. They draw our attention away from our own concerns into a world of nature in the garden.
If nature is intrinsically interesting, the more that people work with it, the more they become drawn in, and the less they are distracted by other issues. In turn, they become more satisfied by gardening. The idea of satisfaction or happiness seems to bring us back to flow.
However, in addition to ‘fascination’, the restoration process described by ART requires ‘being away’, ‘extent’ and ‘compatibility’. These elements combined help to explain how gardeners get completely wrapped up in the garden, and why their sense of time might shift in the process.
More here. We would note that ART is something of an answer to the issue raised by Richard Louv’s “nature deficit disorder”, looking at how kids’ “attention deficit disorder” might be rooted in an underlying starvation for natural experience.
And in terms of our current election, and the policy response, it might be worth looking at the green parks advocate Fields In Trust, who in this blog assess all the parties for their policies in defending green spaces.