Gardening, art, sport – "prescriptions" for mental health that don"t involve pills

Group therapeutic work had never appealed to Kerina, who was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder in her 30s after suffering from mental health issues all her life. “You sit there reading paperwork and it feels like you’re in a classroom,” she says.

Then two years ago the community mental health team in Mid Ross in the Scottish Highlands gave her a “social prescription” – referring her to Branching Out, a Forestry Commission Scotland programme designed to help people recover from long-term mental health problems. For 12 weeks she spent five hours a week in the woods doing conservation work, bushcraft and environmental art.

“I enjoyed it straightaway,” says Kerina, who now volunteers as a mentor with the Abriachan Forest Trust, where she completed the course. “It’s so different from your normal life. You go out there and all your worries leave you. We built shelters, tables, workbenches, a kitchen. We chopped wood, we cooked, we sat around the campfire.

“It just seemed to really work for me. I remember saying: ‘I feel like I’ve been here for ages.’ I’d only been there a day.” Though she still has good and bad days, she says she now finds her problems easier to deal with, and is working towards a formal award in volunteering.

The use of social prescribing – where GPs and other primary care professionals refer patients to non-medical activities, such as gardening, arts and sports, normally delivered by the voluntary sector – is growing, with many schemes tackling mild to moderate mental health problems. Studies have suggested a range of positive mental health and wellbeing outcomes.

But in January a report commissioned by Natural England warned that the lack of a standardised referral mechanism, or funding for the activities offered in the majority of services, posed “fundamental barriers” to the NHS’s ambition to increase the scale of social prescribing.

It identified Rotherham’s service for people with long-term health conditions, which started in 2012, as having many of the ingredients for good practice – including a simple and effective referral system, well-informed link workers to help patients choose an intervention, and, crucially, funding for those interventions.

The report also highlighted the service Rotherham has since started for people with mental health issues, which began as a one-year pilot in 2015 and has just been extended for a third year. In an evaluation of its first year, 93% of service users reported progress against at least one of eight wellbeing outcome measures, and 64% reported progress on four or more.

While the service initially focused on those who had been using services for five to 20 years and needed a support network and meaningful activities to help with a successful discharge, it is now expanding to work with people earlier on.

But Janet Wheatley, chief executive of Voluntary Action Rotherham, which coordinates the programme, backs up the warning in the Natural England report: “You can’t direct more and more people to use resources in the community without providing funding to support that.”

Gardening, art, sport – "prescriptions" for mental health that don"t involve pills

How to Bring the Joy of Gardening Indoors

So, you’re not an outdoor person. The thought of bugs and sunburn have you running for the safety of your home. Just because you prefer the indoors doesn’t mean you can’t reap the benefits of gardening and plant life.

Many believe plants can make people happier by giving you more meaning in your life. Watering a plant occasionally does not seem profound, but it really can have a positive impact.

Caring for greenery has other added benefits. Plants filter the air. They absorb gasses around them and emit cleaner oxygen. Learning the needs of different plants expands the mind. Some like lots of sunlight and water. Others prefer shade and infrequent watering. It is fun to learn what your potted beauty prefers.

If you decide to plant herbs and veggies, your loving kindness produces fresh herbs and vegetables for the table. Eating the fruits of your labors is a joy like no other.

Herb Garden

Growing herbs in your home is a great way to add some green on a small scale. Grow your favorite herbs in just a couple of small containers. Unless you have a large window, you may need to invest in some grow lights as well. Many people are able to have a flourishing garden on the windowsill. Popular choices include basil, bay, chervil, chives, oregano, parsley, rosemary, sage, tarragon, and thyme.

Pick plants that you think you will use in the kitchen to start with. This gives you a little extra motivation to tend to your window garden. These herbs will leave your home smelling fresh and your dishes tasting even fresher. Your herbs will need at least four hours of natural light a day. South and southwest facing windows are the best.

Tea Garden

Tea gardens are just another form of herb garden but with a different benefit. Tea herbs are great for hot and cold beverages as well as medicinal purposes. Chamomile, lemon balm, and mint are great to get started with.

Chamomile is a relaxing tea that helps calm nerves, settle stomach aches and indigestion, and help you sleep. It can even be used for a soothing foot bath. It is an easy plant to grow from seed. It has an attractive and fragrant white flower that adds a little brightness to an indoor space. Pick the flowers as they start to bloom and dry in the shade for the best tea.

Lemon balm has a light lemony taste and fragrance. It is known as the ‘happy herb’ because it acts as a natural anti-depressant. This is probably due to its soothing effect on the nervous system. This herb thrives in the sun or in the shade. Leaves should be dried in the shade.

Mint can easily share a pot with your lemon balm plants. Peppermint tea is great for soothing stomach aches. Mints are easy to grow and come in many varieties. Make sure to select a container with a wide surface. Harvest the leaves before budding and hang to dry.

Your well-being is increased by any form of gardening. Herb gardens are an easy and enjoyable way to bring the joy of gardening indoors. Plants bring fresh air, life, and beauty to any space.

How to Bring the Joy of Gardening Indoors

Horticultural treatment: "Gardening makes us come to feel renewed inside"

1 of the items that set me considering about gardening and the thoughts was a patient of mine who suffered from extreme, recurrent depression. In her childhood she seasoned emotional neglect and violent abuse and as an grownup had wonderful difficulty in forming good relationships. She started to feel that her existence was blighted. The discovery of gardening in her 40s made a large variation to her. She informed me, with conviction: “It is the only time I feel I am good.”

What did she imply by this feeling of goodness? Could it be linked to the perception of gardening as a virtuous activity? I feel it is much more than that, and displays a deeper type of adjust, linked to the discovery of getting in a position to make issues expand. Gardening was not a remedy for her, but it gave her a supply of stability and self-really worth.

Plants are considerably much less frightening and difficult than people, so a garden might be an accessible way of reconnecting with our existence-offering impulses. Background noise falls away and you can escape from other people’s ideas and judgments, so that within a backyard there is, perhaps, far more freedom to truly feel excellent about by yourself. I believe this relief from the interpersonal may well, paradoxically, be a way of reconnecting with our humanity.

^{In a backyard, you can escape other people’s judgement (GETTY Pictures)}

The peacefulness of gardens and gardening arises partly through this escape from other men and women. As Freud mentioned: “Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.” But when it comes to developing things, for all its solace, this planet of plants can feel mysterious and intimidating to an outsider. Any person new to gardening is invariably anxious they won’t have “green fingers”.

But, when we do make this discovery, what a feeling we have of discovering treasure. I have come to believe that there is a specific variety of “illusion” at perform, which is component of what hooks individuals to gardening. It certainly was the situation for me.

What I am talking about involves the extremely beginnings: how plants grow from seed. I am almost ridiculously proud of our asparagus bed because it commenced life in my hands, as a packet of seed. If you are a quite seasoned gardener it is simple to overlook the magic of shock that varieties the basis of this illusion, despite the fact that I just lately caught a glimpse of it in my backyard designer husband, Tom, when some tree peony seedlings sprouted soon after three many years, just as he was about to give up.

The concept of illusion comes from the paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. It is central to his account of how a child relates to the earliest environment. When a baby would like anything sufficient to conjure it up in the imagination, and when this coincides with what transpires in actuality, the illusion for the child is of having made it occur.

Winnicott believed this kind of moments foster a sense of self-belief which aids us bear the disappointments and harshness of actuality.

^{Private view: Sue Stuart-Smith with her husband Tom gardening with each other at house sparked Sue’s curiosity in horticultural therapy (MMGI/MARIANNE MAJERUS)}

In the husbandry of seeds and the interaction amongst thoughts and nature that follows, we can knowledge something of this. Creating items increase has a variety of mystery to it and we can claim some of that mystery for ourselves. I like to feel this green-fingers illusion can act as a psychological development element and assist counteract a sense of impotence that overcomes all of us at times, but especially soon after trauma or psychological breakdown.

This illusion can function the two approaches. If your first foray into expanding from seed isn’t profitable, it can be much more than disheartening. That is why it is so important for kids to start off with effortless sunflowers or radishes. In truth, most of us have green fingers, offered the proper context in which to make the discovery.

Last yr, I visited Increasing Area, a mental wellness recovery venture in Wales. Here, new arrivals start off working in the most secluded elements of the backyard. When you enter a walled backyard, you immediately truly feel you are in a warmer, protected room. This is crucial in terms of recovery, due to the fact when you come to feel secure you can let your defences down and it is only then that you can begin to enable new experiences in.

An additional venture, Grow2Grow at Commonwork in Kent, is for men and women aged from 14 to 24 with significant behavioural or mental health difficulties, which includes psychosis. Numerous have been excluded from school. The food they grow is offered to neighborhood dining establishments they also cook and eat collectively. At the finish of the two-yr programme, which they attend two days a week, an remarkable 80 per cent of them are assisted into education or work.

Some of the therapeutic power of gardening may possibly come up from the component of aggression that is concerned, as effectively as care. There are instances when I appreciate unleashing my secateurs, and the fantastic thing about destructiveness in the backyard is that it can all be in the service of development – if you never reduce back the plants, you will be overrun by them.

In Great Expectations, Miss Havisham’s backyard is “desolate and neglected”. But, by the end of the novel, Pip realises how “in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand all-natural and healing influences”.

If only she had got the secateurs out. All her vengeance could have gone into transforming that backyard.

*Sue Stuart-Smith’s book The Nicely Gardened Thoughts will be published by HarperCollins in 2016

For far more about the NGS Festival Weekend (June seven-eight), pay a visit to ngs.org.united kingdom Many organisations, nationwide and neighborhood, use horticultural therapy as component of a therapy programme for disadvantaged groups. Here is a assortment:

Expanding Space Based mostly in Wales, this new project does not however have a internet site (01633 810718).

Grow2Grow Based mostly in Kent (01732 463255 commonwork.org).

Thrive A nationwide charity whose aim is to enable good adjust in the lives of disabled and disadvantaged folks via the use of gardening (020 7720 2212 thrive.org.united kingdom).

Greenfingers Charity dedicated to supplying gardens for kids, siblings and households who use hospices all around the United kingdom (01494 674749 greenfingers charity.org.uk).

Help for Heroes Charity devoted to the assistance of ex-servicemen and females, includes horticultural treatment as element of its programme (01980 846459 helpforheroes.org.united kingdom).

Gardening Leave Charity focused to the support of ex-servicemen and women (01292 521444 gardeningleave.org)

Horticultural treatment: "Gardening makes us come to feel renewed inside"

Gardening Against the Odds 2014: beauty in the encounter of adversity

Their award was like a seed and the Butterfly Garden is currently cross-pollinating with the winners of the Youthful Gardener class: Dost, a centre for younger immigrants and refugees, and Ricky Downey, an apprentice gardener. Last Thursday, Chris acquired his British Empire Medal. He had a brooch produced up and reproduced a comparable award for each and every one of his students, all to be presented by the Lord Lieutenant.

THE 2014 AWARDS

Over the coming 12 months, the Gardening Towards the Odds awards will proceed to celebrate these who battle against physical and mental odds, but we are also introducing a new class – Gardens that Make You Smile – highlighting exuberant gardens with generosity of spirit that uplift and make life far better for these who see them.

Those who smile live longer. It has been proved that smiling boosts our immune systems, modifications our mood, lowers blood strain and can even act as a organic facelift, so if gardens can include to our wellbeing, why not market their advantages and reward our benefactors? In the meantime, their creators are obtaining their very own overall health bonus through workout and fresh air. Just think about how significantly much better daily life could be if all front gardens displayed a tiny wit amid the normal plants and shrubs.

Katy Cox’s end-of-terrace backyard in Faversham is a prime example. When I visited final week I was entranced with her horticultural whimsy. Greens increase happily in outdated tin trunks succulents be successful in small jewellery situations (and, much more remarkably, in plastic dinosaurs that lurk in window boxes packed with ferns) and tin cans of alpines balance in precarious Fifties wirework amid surrealistic marine creatures – all to seduce passers-by.Katy makes fruit preserves and liqueurs (from mightyfinethings.co.uk) and organises a month-to-month street marketplace (favershammarket.org). She will also demonstrate her garden as element of Faversham Open Gardens on June 29.

_{Katy Cox’s Faversham garden walks with dinosaurs (CLARA MOLDEN)}

One more such gardener is Marilyn Phipps, who welcomes site visitors to her beach-property venue with an outdated Lloyd Loom chair that has observed greater days. Alternatively of ending up in the skip, this venerable outdated resting place displays a assortment of little pot plants nestling in its exposed springs. To Marilyn, gardening is a kind of self-expression, a inventive way of pleasing. But it is not just horticultural jokes that please: I pass a front garden on my way to the station which is just so charming, it constantly tends to make me smile as I hurry to catch my train.

_{Marilyn Phipps puts an previous chair to great use in Kent (CLARA MOLDEN)}

The most innovative and amusing gardens can be discovered in the concrete jungle of the city. When east London “Pothole Gardener” Steve Wheen wished to brighten up his grey neighbourhood, “gardening came to mind”, he says. So, for the past 3 many years, he has been filling holes in the street with compost and plants, and incorporating tiny attributes “to carry happiness in sudden areas” (see The Little Book of Small Gardens and his internet site thepotholegardener.co.uk).

Apart from drawing focus to the potholes, Steve’s biggest reward is to sit back and observe the public’s response to his ephemeral miniature gardens.

_{Steve Wheen’s “pothole gardens” (REX)}

In north London, architect and hedge-cutter Tim Bushe turns boundaries into widespread ground. After he fulfilled his wife’s request to sculpt his very own privet hedges into a cat, neighbours he had never met just before made make contact with. Local landmarks this kind of as his popular Highbury herd of elephants make people quit, smile and socialise. And he employs his fees to support a charity that aids people with learning difficulties (hft.org.uk, formerly the Home Farm Trust).

Such ideas have blossomed in recent years. Telegraph author and Gardening Towards the Odds judge Tim Richardson thought up the Chelsea Fringe as a way of bringing collectively the myriad neighborhood gardening projects that spring up close to London. “The concept of the Fringe is to give a platform for these projects to encourage themselves and give an annual concentrate for celebrations,” he says. Accomplishment is clear, with growing numbers of gardeners taking part, and satellite fringes springing up in Bristol, Brighton and Kent, as well as abroad (see chelseafringe.com).

Tim describes the Fringe, operating this 12 months from May possibly 17 by way of to June eight, as “street vogue” to the “haute couture” of Chelsea suitable. Final 12 months, Anna Rose Hughes’s garden in a converted lavatory block in Peckham, just a corridor’s width, integrated the site’s authentic sinks packed with dripping asplenium, athyrium, dryopteris and polystichum ferns. This sort of irreverence proves gardeners have a sense of humour.

_{Anna Rose Hughes’s lavatory block garden in Peckham (CHELSEA FRINGE)}

Humour isn’t going to feature extensively in mainstream Chelsea gardens, but a memorable exception in 2006 was Marney Hall’s 4head Backyard of Dreams an idyllic retreat house to 1000′s of healing plants, and the flower show’s largest plant sculpture – a reclining female figure clothed in a assortment of grasses and mosses.

Because one’s personal garden seldom evokes a smile, it really is up to us to nominate the gardens of other folks. Send us examples of gardeners whose efforts bring a smile to your encounter, and spread the joy.

WHAT IS GARDENING Against THE ODDS?

Gardeners towards the odds make their very own lives and the lives of other people brighter, far better and far more fun via their efforts to produce lovely backyard spaces. Entries are invited from individual gardeners and groups from anywhere in the United kingdom. Nominations are also tremendously encouraged. Gardeners can be shy about placing themselves forward. Please tell us about somewhere that catches your eye.

THE ODDS Incorporate

Physical disabilities, this kind of as sight, health and mobility issues, as well as social isolation.

Psychological and psychological difficulties, where gardening offers solace.

Young gardeners towards the odds: we invite nominations and entries for any gardener under 25 whose daily life has been made greater through gardening.

NEW FOR THIS 12 months

Gardens that make you smile. They could be in “not possible” locations or designed in the unlikeliest spot or container. We’re looking for quirky, eccentric and amusing backyard spaces. Elspeth Thompson, to whose memory the awards are dedicated, loved the splashes of attractiveness, produced for other people to enjoy. As you go about your every day life, please snap these on your mobile phone, tablet or camera. Entries will be posted on a photo gallery on Telegraph gardening and gardeningagainsttheodds.com this summer time

ENTRIES AND NOMINATIONS, PLEASE

These can be submitted online or by publish. You can enter any variety of times.

On the internet: please submit pictures taken in 2014 at gardeningagainst theodds.com (the place terms and conditions are displayed) and contain the class you are getting into (if coming into the Young Gardener group, please state the age), exactly where the images were taken and a brief explanation of the odds, together with your title, postal and e mail tackle and phone variety. Or electronic mail GATO@conservationfoundation.co.uk. By submit: please consist of your title, tackle and telephone quantity and send to: Gardening Towards The Odds, The Conservation Foundation, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR.

Closing date: Monday one September 2014

PRIZES

The total winner will acquire the Gardening Against The Odds trophy for a yr. They, the runner-up and eight extremely commended award winners, visitors and nominators will be invited to a gala presentation occasion in the Great Conservatory at Syon Park in spring 2015.

THE JUDGES

A distinguished panel of gardeners, writers, conservationists and two previous award winners will judge the shortlist of entries in autumn 2014.

They include the Duchess of Northumberland, creator of The Alnwick Backyard, conservationist David Bellamy, actress and gardener Susan Hampshire, Conservation Basis director David Shreeve and Frank Wilson, husband of Elspeth Thompson.

WIN A GARDENING Against THE ODDS Book

With the aid of Coutts, the Conservation Foundation has published a compilation of some of the inspiring and beautiful entries from the past four many years, such as beneficial contacts.

The first ten readers to e-mail GATO@conservationfoundation.co.united kingdomwill acquire a copy. Even more copies are obtainable for £7.50 like postage and packing.

Last YEAR’S WINNERS

Our thanks to the Duchess of Northumberland for hosting at Syon Park, to Coutts for its generous sponsorship and the Backyard Centre Group for supplying the afternoon tea. Thanks also to the Tanner Believe in for supporting the gardeningagainsttheodds.cominternet site and Hayloft Plants which gave fuchsias and geraniums to each guest.

Gardening Against the Odds 2014: beauty in the encounter of adversity