Green Gym is a scheme which inspires you to improve both your health and the environment at the same time.
Experienced leaders guide you through a range of practical projects, giving you the opportunity to tackle physical jobs in the outdoors – improving your fitness, boosting your practical skills and confidence, and benefitting your local green spaces.
Find your nearest Green Gym in Scotland
A Green Gym offers:
- Free access to an organised programme of outdoor environmental tasks with a group of like-minded individuals
- Regular sessions of rewarding physical activity
- A variety of tasks for all ages and abilities
- Opportunities for training and developing new skills, using traditional tools
When you go to a Green Gym you won’t be squaring up to a rowing machine or weights every time. One day you might be cutting back invasive undergrowth, the next planting trees or wildflowers, the next repairing steps on a public path or maybe clearing out an overgrown pond. You might even learn how to make benches and bat boxes.
Greenspaces for Mental Health
There is a wealth of evidence that Green Gyms and other nature-based programmes provide proven benefits in improving peoples’ health and wellbeing, but what are the key components that make such schemes effective? These components are considered in a short guide, ‘Greenspaces for Mental Health’, which outlines seven prime research findings on the topic, with ideas on how these might translate into practice. Alongside the research results are ‘practitioner perspectives’ provided by TCV staff who have organised green health programmes, and who are well placed to consider the principal factors for their success. The guide has been produced by TCV, the University of Stirling and Dundee Green Health Partnership.
Download the guide here