Joining Garden Club live as guest speaker on Monday 13th September 2021 is prominent psychiatrist and psychotherapist Sue Stuart-Smith, on the relationship between gardening and mental health.
Sue and her husband Tom Stuart-Smith are one of the most internationally distinguished and influential couples in the world of gardens and horticulture.
Tom is a universally renowned garden designer with a string of gold-medal winning gardens at Chelsea Flower Show. Sue has used her career as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist as the basis for her interest in the benefits of gardens for people’s mental and physical health and wellbeing, which in 2020 she channelled into one of the most acclaimed garden books for many years, The Well-Gardened Mind, which looks at the effects of nature and gardening on our health and wellbeing through real-life stories.
Dr Stuart-Smith read English at Cambridge before qualifying as a doctor and becoming an eminent psychiatrist and psychotherapist. She currently teaches at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London and is a consultant at DocHealth, a not for profit, psychotherapeutic consultation service for doctors.
Her book - The Well-Gardened Mind - tells of how our gardens and nature are vital to our wellbeing. The book talks through case studies, literary references and fascinating historic pieces to show how we are part of nature and that we need to cultivate our connection with it in order to thrive. She references places all over the world where horticulture is a source of healing, from secure prisons in the USA to restorative gardens in the UK. Through touching conversations and sometimes harrowing stories, she introduces people who have been helped back from dark mental, spiritual or physical situations by contact with nature and greenery.
Her deep understanding of the human psyche makes this a perfect source text as well as an engrossing read. Topics range from our understanding of mortality, and relative time, to the scientific reasons why beauty calms and revitalises us.
