The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature

Thursday, December 3, 2020 2pm to 3pm

NOTE: THIS IS A PAST EVENT

Join  Reynolda Gardens of WFU and Bookmarks for this free virtual event with Sue Stuart-Smith, distinguished psychiatrist, avid gardener, and author of The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature, a Sunday Times bestseller. The book offers an inspiring and consoling narrative about the healing effects of gardening and its ability to decrease stress and foster mental well-being in our everyday lives. A Q & A with Jon Roethling, director of Reynolda Gardens, will follow. Free! Register via Bookmarks here. Books available for purchase at Bookmarks.

About Sue Stuart-Smith:
Sue Stuart-Smith, a prominent psychiatrist and psychotherapist, took her degree in English literature at Cambridge before qualifying as a doctor. She worked in the National Health Service for many years, becoming the lead clinician for psychotherapy in Hertfordshire. She currently teaches at The Tavistock Clinic in London and is consultant to the DocHealth service. She is married to Tom Stuart-Smith, the celebrated garden designer, and, over thirty years together, they have created the wonderful Barn Garden in Hertfordshire. The Well-Gardened Mind is her first book.

About The Well-Gardened Mind:
The garden is often seen as a refuge, a place to forget worldly cares, removed from the “real” life that lies outside. But when we get our hands in the earth we connect with the cycle of life in nature through which destruction and decay are followed by regrowth and renewal. Gardening is one of the quintessential nurturing activities and yet we understand so little about it. The Well-Gardened Mind provides a new perspective on the power of gardening to change people’s lives. Here, Sue Stuart-Smith investigates the many ways in which mind and garden can interact and explores how the process of tending a plot can be a way of sustaining an innermost self.

Stuart-Smith’s own love of gardening developed as she studied to become a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. From her grandfather’s return from World War I to Freud’s obsession with flowers to case histories with her own patients to progressive gardening programs in such places as Rikers Island prison in New York City, Stuart-Smith weaves thoughtful yet powerful examples to argue that gardening is much more important to our cognition than we think. Recent research is showing how green nature has direct antidepressant effects on humans. Essential and pragmatic, The Well-Gardened Mind is a book for gardeners and the perfect read for people seeking healthier mental lives.

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