Hello everyone, welcome back to the Epic Gardening podcast, Kevin the spirit to here.

We are joined by Ariana Iapini again for our final episode this week.

She is the founder of the birch harbor gardens and an edible garden designer and consultant.

You'll hear more about that in just a second.

Ariana, we're going to finish this off with a benefit for ourselves in the garden.

I know I guess a lot of what we do in the garden is benefiting ourselves with this one's a little more

directly benefiting us and we're talking about just how much better we end up feeling by

practicing the act of gardening.

Yes, I love this topic because I think there's really so much to this and I think science is

only now really just maybe not now but starting to dig into in depth about how gardening and

horticulture therapy can kind of help our moods and our health overall you know that there's a

whole there's a whole study around the gut brain access and how what you eat can change your mood

but not only that I think there's back to the space where you know I've collected over the years

I've collected various practices of gardening through different systems of gardening so things

like permaculture, biodynamic, Korean natural farming you know these are all kind of holistic

ecological and ethical approaches to farming gardening food and nutrition.

So not only does holistic gardening focus on nature but it also considers the role that nature plays

on us on our spiritual and emotional connectedness the term grounding often relates to coming

into ourselves and presencing the intimate relationship we have with ourselves.

So if you take your shoes off in the garden to feel grounded to feel more connected to the earth while

you're simultaneously acquiring all of those benefits that the soil has on us on a biological

level which I think is so beautiful soil and even the simple act of putting your hands into the soil

...