Nature often inspires strong helpful feelings. Sometimes too, we can do well to turn to gardening and nature when experiencing strong difficult feelings. Overwhelming emotions indoors can often swamp us and leave us unable to process thought and feelings, solve problems, feel light in spirit, or know what to ‘do’ with ourselves physically. Then, a session in the garden, titivating and pottering, observing nature doing its thing, creates space for solutions to problems or gathers together and soothes a fractured soul. Anger, for example, can be released by digging over a patch of ground furiously until physically spent, and the ground is loose and friable. Or by snatching away at a patch of weeds until feelings are more ordered, and the bed is clear and readied.

The bigger, slower cycles that are apparent in nature provide a way into seeing the bigger picture, providing context as well as an alternative coherent world to place our own problems. Often a spell in nature relieves us from our own stormy mind-set and reconnects us with a sense of peace and calm. If gardening isn’t available, then walking in a green space has many known benefits, a space the lusher; the better. Walking the longer; the more effective. Then, to conclude the subsiding of these feelings, check in briefly to register the difference from a place of peace, and acknowledge the work complete, for now.