If you’ve ever felt your shoulders relax as you step into a garden, or found a sense of calm while tending to plants, you’re not imagining it. There’s real magic in those muddy hands and green shoots—and The Well Gardened Mind: Rediscovering Nature in the Modern World by psychiatrist and psychotherapist Sue Stuart-Smith captures this beautifully.
This isn’t just a book for keen gardeners. It’s a gentle yet powerful exploration of how connecting with nature—and particularly gardening—can restore and nourish our mental wellbeing. Whether you’re pruning roses, digging veg beds, or simply admiring the weeds that insist on growing in the cracks, there’s something deeply healing at work. Stuart-Smith unpacks that with a calm, compassionate voice that’s as soothing as a walk through a quiet greenhouse.
Drawing from neuroscience, psychology, history, and personal stories (including her own and her husband Tom Stuart-Smith’s renowned landscape design work), she shows how gardening can be a lifeline. From veterans struggling with PTSD to prisoners finding purpose in prison gardens, from grief to depression, she shows that reconnecting with the natural world isn’t just nice—it’s necessary.
One of the great joys of this book is how accessible it is. It’s rich with insight but never heavy. You don’t need a PhD in psychology or a RHS diploma to get something from it—just a little curiosity about why plants, soil, and a patch of green can make us feel whole again.
At our charity, we see this transformative power of gardening every day. Stuart-Smith puts into words what many of our clients already know in their bones: that tending to a garden can help us tend to ourselves.
So, whether you’re a seasoned horticultural therapist, someone new to the idea of therapeutic gardening, or simply feeling a little frayed around the edges and looking for a gentle read, The Well Gardened Mind is a book we wholeheartedly recommend.
Read it. Share it. Then go outside and plant something.
We recommend you order it from our favourite local bookshop in Hay-on-Wye who specialise in Gardening Books!
