Virtual: Bookmarks & Reynolda Gardens Present Sue Stuart-Smith and The Well-Gardened Mind

Join Bookmarks and Reynolda Gardens for this 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.
This event is free to attend but requires registration. Books are now available for purchase at Bookmarks.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.
Please note: The Bookmarks team processes each order individually, including event registrations. Within one day of your order placement, a team member will register you for the event and you will receive a separate email (to this same email address) with the event login and password. Although we do our best to process same-day event orders, if your order is placed within 24 hours of an event start time, we cannot guarantee that you will receive event log in information in time to watch the event. For Crowdcast events, you can access the recording after the live broadcast.
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 a 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.