THE WELL-GARDENED MIND

An analysis of and tribute to the beneficial effects of gardening on the heart and mind.

Stuart-Smith—a veteran psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and devoted gardener in the U.K.—employs several tactics in her debut work. She relates her personal history with gardening (she didn’t care for it initially); explores the history of gardening in various cultures and contexts; describes how gardening has been used in a variety of therapeutic situations—including such institutions as mental hospitals and prisons—and in ravaged communities in need of restoration (urban farms and gardens). The author notes that she’d once been an English major, and many of her allusions are sturdy confirmation: William Wordsworth, who is prominent early in the text; Henry David Thoreau; Wilfred Owen; Michel de Montaigne, who wanted to die in his garden; and Virginia Woolf are some who stroll through the garden of Stuart-Smith’s text. Also present are numerous luminaries in psychology (Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Erik Erikson, and Jean Piaget), medicine (Oliver Sacks), and researchers in a variety of fields. Readers might think—based on the title and subject matter—that this is some kind of self-help, New Age text. It’s not. The author delivers a thoroughly researched text based on her deep and wide reading about the history of gardening, her visits to many of the therapeutic garden sites she mentions, and her interviews with many people, professionals and patients alike. Yes, there are a few sentences that, taken out of context, sound a little bit precious (“an environment can be a spiritual as well as a physical home”), but most of these sentences blossom in beds of substantial research. Stuart-Smith ends with a tight chapter about the climate crisis and its effects on both our physical and psychological health. “Just as the state of the planet is unsustainable,” she writes, “so our lifestyles have become psychologically unsustainable.”

Full of surprise and wonder—and relevant research.