Horticultural Science and Technology 원예과학기술지 ISSN:1226-8763(Print) 2465-8588(Online)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the horticultural activity of touching soil in the hospital on autonomic nervous stress response of patients with brain disease. The study was performed 12 times from August 2, 2017 to October 18, 2017 on 53 patients with brain disease admitted to the rehabilitation hospital in G city. The patients were divided into 4 groups, including one control group and 3 experimental groups (a horticultural activity group that touches the soil, a horticultural activity group that does not touch the soil, and a group that only looks at plants in the room). We measured the stress index of the autonomous nerve. The control group didn’t show any change, but the stress index of experimental group A got significantly lower from 60.3 to 46.8 (p = 0.001), and that of experimental group B got significantly lower from 67.3 to 56.7 (p = 0.036). In addition, as a result of testing the vascular health index, both experimental groups A and B, who actively participated in the horticultural activity, didn’t show a significant difference. However, it was found that the vascular health index of the control group significantly got worse from 11.1 to 0.6 (p = 0.010) and from 13.5 to -0.8 (p = 0.047) in experimental group C. In terms of average pulse, both the control and experimental groups did not show a significant difference, but experimental groups A (p = 0.649), B (p = 0.502), and C (p = 0.406), except the control group (p = 1.000), were found to gain their stability as their average pulse got lower.