I am collaborating for the first time with a team showing a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. Come to your Senses Eco-Therapy Garden combats the detrimental technical overload children often experience today and reconnects them in a garden that plays on the five senses, to restore good mental health. The garden is sponsored by Read more…
James Tilly Matthews, architectural plans and explanatory notes for Bethlem Royal Hospital, 1810-11 In a radical exhibition, an arching history of the treatment of the mad at Bethlem Royal Hospital, also known as Bedlam, forces us to review how future treatment should be. Within this the Madlove project, led by people with mental illness, Read more…
The Winter season is now with us, so we must rest. The gardening tasks have dwindled to a saunter into the bare bones of a slumbering space. Enjoy the exposed garden structure, it reveals a lot about the garden beyond the froth of Summer. Walk. Breathe in crisp air. It is timely to reflect Read more…
“At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done – then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago”. The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett Read more…
The resourcefulness and playful spirits of gardeners overcoming physical and sensory disabilities to garden has caught my breath this Winter on a project in north London. Disability doesn’t figure much, a playful inventiveness makes gardening activities possible. Each has an independence that calls on others only when absolutely needed, whether measuring the spacing of Read more…
We’re delighted to announce the launch of our project ‘Taking a Turn’: mental health history of hospital gardens, supported by the Wellcome Trust, in partnership with the Chelsea Fringe, Chelsea Physic Garden, Kings College London, Our Autonomous Nature, and SLaM at Bethlem Hospital. It explores the mental health history of hospital gardens from Read more…
The survivors of the holocaust are getting on. Many have been in the UK for most of their life now. Traumas are old and familiar, sorrow runs deep and is still so close to the surface. Gardening creates a space that jogs the memories of childhood, of gardens and parks in other cities, of parents Read more…
After many moons of being buried in a storm of research papers, much mindful cogitating and tweaking, my website has hatched. Be welcome, settle in, clasp your hot tea and have a wander around. I wish you a gentle and kind journey. Although gardening is as nearly as old as humankind, discovery of its qualities Read more…