SynthesisPloS one2022
Horticultural therapy for general health in the older adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in PloS one, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- Nature-based interventions: a systematic review of reviews.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Pooled it
- Integrating natural non-pharmaceutical therapies into medical tourism: a dynamic health portrait-driven model for proactive older adult health and public health services.Frontiers in public health · 2025Pooled it
- The impact of gardening on well-being, mental health, and quality of life: an umbrella review and meta-analysis.Systematic reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Horticultural therapy for stress reduction: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Pooled it
- Impact of horticultural therapy on patients admitted to psychiatric wards, a randomised, controlled and open trial.Scientific reports · 2024Trial
- Vegetable Gardening and Health Outcomes in Older Cancer Survivors: A Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA network open · 2024Trial
- Gardening, healthy aging, and longevity: Longitudinal evidence from 25 years of the Lothian Birth Cohort 1921.Journal of environmental psychology · 2026Article
- Timing for green prescription: comparing the immediate and cumulative effects of different duration horticultural therapy programs on college students' mental health.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Article
- Nature's heart: a scoping review of the impact of nature-based interventions for cardiovascular and metabolic disease.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Changing Dietary Patterns among Chinese Older Adults: A Rural-Urban Comparative Analysis (2008-2018).International journal of behavioral medicine · 2025Article
- Association between Gardening Activity and Frailty in Patients with Heart Failure.Internal medicine (Tokyo, Japan) · 2025Article
- An Analytic Hierarchy Process-based case study on older adult-friendly community therapeutic landscape design.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Challenges in nature-based health and therapy research and critical considerations for application in musculoskeletal health.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Efficacy of Horticultural Therapy on Positive, Negative, and Affective Symptoms in Individuals with Schizophrenia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Effectiveness of social and therapeutic horticulture for reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Review
- Should I Pay or Should I Grow? Factors Which Influenced the Preferences of US Consumers for Fruit, Vegetables, Wine and Beer during the COVID-19 Pandemic.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Holistic approach to assess the association between the synergistic effect of physical activity, exposure to greenspace, and fruits and vegetable intake on health and wellbeing: Cross-sectional analysis of UK Biobank.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 6 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundWith a pronounced and historically unprecedented tendency of population ageing, research on ageing and related disorders has been increasingly brought into focus. Horticultural therapy (HT), as an important role of social prescribing, has been an integrative for decades. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to evaluate HT for general health in older adults.
methodsElectronic databases including PubMed, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, the Cochrane Library, MEDLINE (Ovid), EMBASE (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCO), China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and the Wanfang database, grey literature databases and clinical trials registers were searched from inception to March 2021. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs), quasi-RCTs (QRCTs) and the cohort studies about HT for adults aged over 60 were included in this study. Outcome measures were physical function, quality of life, BMI, mood tested by self-reported questionnaire and the expression of the immune cells. The study was registered under PROSPERO (CRD42019146184).
resultsTotally, fifteen studies (thirteen RCTs and two cohort studies) involving 1046 older participants were included. Meta-analysis showed that HT resulted in better quality of life (MD 2.09, 95% CI [1.33, 2.85], P<0. 01) and physical function (SMD 0.82, 95% [0.36, 1.29], P<0.01) compared with no-gardener; the similar findings showed in BMI (SMD -0.30, 95% [-0.57, -0.04], P = 0.02) and mood tested by self-reported questionnaire (SMD 2.80, 95% CI [1.82, 3.79], P<0. 01). And HT might be conducive on blood pressure and immunity, while all the evidence were moderate-quality judged by GRADE.
conclusionsHT may improve physical function and quality of life in older adults, reduce BMI and enhance positive mood. A suitable duration of HT may be between 60 to 120 minutes per week lasting 1.5 to 12 months. However, it remains unclear as to what constitutes an optimal recommendation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.