The Well Gardened Mind

Those who work with the earth have known for years: there’s a magical quality to gardening. In a mix of psychology, neuroscience and stories from around the world, Sue Stuart-Smith breaks ground to explore the power of interacting with nature, and how the garden can provide a vital place to cultivate the mind.

The garden has always been a place of peace and perseverance, of nurture and reward. Using contemporary neuroscience, psychoanalysis and compelling real-life stories, The Well Gardened Mind investigates the remarkable effects of nature on our health and wellbeing.

From the science of the brain’s own ‘gardener cells’, to the beauty of flowers and the grounding effects of working with nature’s rhythms of growth, decay and regeneration, Stuart-Smith provides a new perspective on the power of gardening. Prisoners given the chance to grow plants are less likely to reoffend. At-risk young people who get their hands in the soil are more likely to stay in education. Elderly people who garden live longer and have a better quality of life. Using case studies of people struggling with stress, depression, trauma and addiction, as well as her own grandfather’s return from World War I, she explores the many ways in which gardening can help transform people’s lives. Presenting recent research into why people feel more fully alive and energised in the natural world, why gardeners report feeling calmer and more vigorous and why spending time in nature awakens the connection-seeking aspects of our human nature, Stuart-Smith argues that our increasingly urbanised and technology-dependent lifestyles make it more important than ever to rediscover a closer relationship with the earth.

In this glorious book of science, insight and anecdote, Stuart-Smith shows our understanding of nature and its restorative powers is just beginning to flower.