The Well Gardened Mind: Rediscovering Nature in the Modern World - Hardcover

Stuart-Smith, Sue

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0008100713 ISBN 13: 9780008100711

Publisher: William Collins, 2020

Synopsis

This inspirational and authoritative book on mental health and physical labour teaches us how vital gardening can be as an escape for the brain and how having green fingers can help our minds through action as well as thought.

Gardening is one of the quintessential nurturing activities. For many people, apart from having children and raising a family, the process of creating or tending a plot is one of the most significant things in their lives. With the natural rituals of growth, decay and regeneration, safety and enclosure, destruction and renewal, it is as if – alongside the physical activity – we are also gardening our minds. And yet we understand so little about it.

The Well Gardened Mind investigates how an immersion in gardening can affect our inner worlds, both consciously and unconsciously, and how it can help us to find or re-find our place in the world. As current horticultural projects that work with general mental health problems as well as specific ones, such as addiction, refugees and PTSD demonstrate, the garden is intrinsically linked to our capacity for self-reflection and creative thinking. Combining contemporary neuroscience and psychoanalysis with compelling real life stories, prominent psychiatric psychotherapist Sue Stuart-Smith shows how many of the physical and mental processes involved in gardening are ones that are recognised as facilitating neural change.

About this title

About the Author:

A prominent psychiatric psychotherapist, Sue Stuart-Smith took her degree in English literature at Cambridge before qualifying as a doctor and a psychiatrist. She teaches at The Tavistock Clinic in London and works for the National Health Service in Hertfordshire. She is married to Tom Stuart-Smith, the famous garden designer, and, over 25 years together, they have created the wonderful Barn Garden in Hertfordshire.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Collins
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 0008100713
• ISBN 13: 9780008100711
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352