Sue Stuart-Smith - The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature

Scribner

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Copyright 2020 by Sue Stuart-Smith

Originally published in Great Britain in 2020 by William Collins

Excerpt from The Garden in Chapter 9 is reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of The Beneficiaries of the Estate of Vita Sackville-West. Copyright Vita Sackville-West 1946.

Excerpt from Hold Out Your Arms in Chapter 10 is reproduced with permission. Helen Dunmore, Counting Backwards: Poems 19752017 (Bloodaxe Books, 2019). Copyright Helen Dunmore 2017.

Note to Readers: Names and certain characteristics of the people in the case studies presented have been changed.

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First Scribner hardcover edition July 2020

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Interior design by Erich Hobbing

Jacket design by Jaya Miceli

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-4767-9446-4

ISBN 978-1-4767-9450-1 (ebook)

For Tom

Praise for The Well-Gardened Mind

A psychiatrist and gardening devotee explores the mental health benefits that come with tending a plot. Something we can all use right now.

People

Sue Stuart-Smith seeks to go beyond the truism that getting out in the garden is good for you.

The New Yorker

I had no idea just how good getting your hands in the dirt is for your mental health until I read Sue Stuart-Smiths The Well-Gardened Mind.... [She] writes from her professional perspective, as an expert on the human mind, and uses her garden (and many others) to illustrate various findings.

Garden & Gun

[Stuart-Smith] 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.... Full of surprise and wonder.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

This is an important and timely book. Mental health is a growing concern and yet is the least developed, least understood, and least well-resourced aspect of medicine. Sue Stuart-Smiths book is beautifully written, drawing on a lifetimes experience as both a clinician and a gardener, and I urge everyone to read it.

Monty Don, author and lead presenter of the BBCs Gardeners World

Fascinating... Sue Stuart-Smith renders a very special service with this book. Lets hope it reaches not only the converted but those who need it most.

The Observer (UK)

This is a life-affirming study of the special pleasures of tending your garden and growing things.... [Stuart-Smiths] heartfelt arguments for the benefits of nature and gardening for our mental health are informed by research in neuroscience and the evidence of patients who have improved through therapeutic gardening.

The Guardian (UK)

Wise, insightful, and eloquent, Stuart-Smiths soulful and sensitive treatise on horticultures healing properties is a well-positioned book for the current age of anxiety, offering a personally relevant perspective on how to cope in troubled times.

Booklist

A fascinating overlap between the still stumbling science of psychiatry and the ancient art of gardening.

Financial Times

[Stuart-Smith] offers science-backed insight into the healing effects of nature.... A joyful, peace-giving read.

Womans World

This is a book so wise and comfortable that it merits a place alongside Christopher Lloyds The Well-Tempered Garden by the side of every bed.... [Stuart-Smiths] deep understanding of the human psyche makes this a perfect source text as well as an engrossing read.

Gardens Illustrated (UK)

A truly uplifting book on the power of gardeningand how it can change peoples lives.

Stylist (UK)

The most original gardening book ever.

Sunday Times (UK)

Combines observation, horticulture, literature and history.... There is much here to feed the soul.

The Times (UK)

In this gentle and wise book, Sue Stuart-Smith explores the vigorous relationship between the land and mental health, demonstrating the many occasions and ways that gardening can strengthen our inner vitality. In examining working of the land as a psychodynamic process, she exposes deep truths about the interconnectedness of the mind, the body, and what lies outside ourselves, and she does so with a winning mix of verve and generosity.

Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon and Far from the Tree

A compelling and deeply moving account of how profoundly our well-being can be affected through contact with gardening and the natural world. This is a timely call of return. Read it.

Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes

Fascinating in its content, lyrical, moving, and elegantly written, The Well-Gardened Mind explores and celebrates the very real connection we humans feel with plants and, by extension, our gardens.

Rachel de Thame, presenter for the BBCs Gardeners World

Riveting, inspiring, and often very moving, Sue Stuart-Smiths journey into the therapy of gardening reveals just how deep our connection with nature is, how much we risk when we cut ourselves off from it, and how much we can gain from its restorative power. A lively, compassionate exhortation for us all to get our hands back in the soil.

Isabella Tree, author of Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm

The wisest book Ive read in many years. You dont have to be a gardener or own a garden to take immense solace and pleasure from this remarkable book. Dr. Stuart-Smith doesnt presume to make absurd and extravagant claims, but everything she says about the mind (and Ive learned so much in the way of the history of psychiatry and psychology, as well as practical tips for both mind and garden) has the ring of authenticity and truth. Hugely recommended.

Stephen Fry

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sue and Tom with baby Rose, planting the first hedges in the courtyard at the Barn, 1988.

Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your teacher.

William Wordsworth (17701850)

Long before I wanted to be a psychiatrist, long before I had any inkling that gardening might play an important role in my life, I remember hearing the story of how my grandfather was restored after the First World War.