Tending Plants and Psyches
The Well-Gardened Mind’ shares how to harvest the restorative, grounding benefits of nature.
The 19th C poet Minnie Aumonier once wrote, “When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden.” Turns out this slightly treacly sentiment, found on countless garden mugs and Pinterest boards, is rooted in a deeper truth, one that Sue Stuart-Smith, UK-based psychiatrist, psychotherapist, researcher, and gardener, explores in her 2020 book ‘The Well-Gardened Mind, The Restorative Power of Nature.’
The book, a meaty volume combining personal interviews and social science studies, reveals how connecting with nature nourishes and grounds us, instilling a sense of shelter and safety even if (when) the world around us is fraught. Stuart-Smith begins with a look at tending and examines how the process of gardening, even the tedious routine and weedy bits, helps to restore our physical, emotional, and even spiritual equilibrium. “A long session in the garden can leave you feeling dead on your feet but strangely renewed inside—as if you have worked on yourself in the process,” she writes.
Chapter two ‘Seeds and Self-belief’ contrasts the implicit faith of sowing seeds in expectation of a harvest and the “creative power of illusion,” the heady role we assume, subservient as it may be, in accomplishing a moment of beauty in a garden. The author observes, “Shaping a bit of reality is empowering but, crucially in the garden, we are never completely in control.”
No kidding.
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