My gardening week
Erythroniums, cosmos-sowing and therapeutic gardens
April 4th
Spring has really arrived in the garden. It’s having a moment, as friends in my garden group tend to say, and it’s difficult to drag myself away over the Easter weekend, but we are visiting my parents in Somerset. Before I go I water all my seedlings obsessively and leave the greenhouse door wide open as I know it’s going to be warm. My parents’ garden is looking immaculate. Mum (83) and Dad (87) are still looking after their acre with such love and care, mainly on their own. Dad has Alzheimer’s and gardening is something he has always done, so he carries on digging, turning compost and making bonfires. He drives Mum mad by digging up potatoes he’s just planted and adding layer after layer of not-quite-rotted compost - and the creosoting! The gates and fences are thick with the stuff as it’s another one of those things that he just does on autopilot. They can’t move out as he would be entirely lost without this garden - it keeps him going, keeps him pottering, and keeps my mother sane.
Don’t you think gardening should be available on prescription? I went to a brilliant talk at Serge Hill the other day about hospital gardens and the tangible, measured benefits of living, green outdoor space for anyone physically or mentally ill. The panel discussion with Jinny Blom, Rachel de Thame and Sue Stuart-Smith was organised as a fundraiser for a new garden at Mount Vernon Hospital in Hertfordshire, a project led by the wonderful Matt Biggs (Gardeners Question Time). Matt has been fighting his own battle with cancer for some years and was there, in a wheelchair, as cheery as ever. What an inspirational man. ‘I’m so glad I belong to this wonderful community of gardeners,’ he said, and I had to choke back the tears.
Jinny told us about the indoor Sky Garden she designed for the ICU at the Chelsea & Westminster and talked about an art programme there that ran projected films of nature on the white walls of the paediatric burns unit. The time taken to dress wounds was hugely reduced when these immersive films were played. And there were other facts about intensive care units where just the view of greenery and outdoor space (as opposed to white walls) significantly helped to reduce delirium and acute illness. As Oliver Sachs wrote: ‘In many cases, gardens and nature are more effective than any medication.’
The actual gardening of these spaces is so therapeutic. Surely there must be a way to create these communal hospital gardens and then run programmes that pull people in to help garden them - there are so many people in our communities who would benefit from this. I came across the Gardening GP on Instagram recently (@the_gardening_gp). She has established a community garden in Devon where she lives, and prescribes gardening to patients suffering from mental health issues. We need more people like her in this world.
Back to my parents’ garden. We have a good session clearing one of their beds, and I persuade my son to get involved too. I tell mum to relax but she is soon out there with us, and then Dad arrives with a wheelbarrow to take everything to the bonfire heap. For an hour we have three generations working together and it’s so lovely.
