Sue Stuart-Smith on Nature, Childhood and The Garden as Medicine
5/7/202638 min
Sue Stuart-Smith is a psychiatrist, gardener and the author of The Well-Gardened Mind. She has spent her career making the case that going outside and getting your hands in the soil is one of the most powerful things we can do for our mental health.
Sue runs the Serge Hill Project, along with her husband, Tom Stuart-Smith — a garden and events space where children and groups from disadvantaged backgrounds come to learn about the profound link between gardening and wellbeing.
Her research isn’t just scientific; it’s rooted in her own family history. Her grandfather found solace in gardening after the trauma of being a prisoner of war and her mother restored a large garden to cope with the death of Sue’s father.
The episode builds on these stories to explore the positive hormonal effects of gardening on the body, the growing movement of green prescribing and how beauty can be a lifeline to those in recovery.
This is a conversation about stepping outside, tuning into the natural world and finding a gentler rhythm.
A full tour of Sue’s beautiful private gardens is available to our Patreon community.
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Music by @simeonwalkermusic
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Produced by @podshoponline
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSue Stuart-Smith· Guest0:00
[gentle music] I realized that when I was in the garden, I had that same feeling like I had as a child, being lost in play. You know, when you feel you're in your own world, you feel safe, and you've got a sense of freedom somehow, inner freedom, and your mind can just sort of wander as well. I think that's a lot of what gardening does for people. You know, d- cardiovascular level, we know being out in nature, within minutes your blood pressure drops a bit, your heart rate settles down, your cortisol levels, your stress hormone levels drop within about 30 minutes. I think it's absolutely the center of my life. It's kind of like the place I always want to come back to and I don't want to leave.
Matt Gibberd· Host0:48
[gentle music] Hello, and welcome to the Homing Podcast. I'm Matt Gibberd. Today's guest is Sue Stuart-Smith, psychiatrist and author of the best-selling book, The Well-Gardened Mind. Her husband, Tom, was a guest on the podcast a couple of months ago, and today I'm chatting to Sue in their beautiful greenhouse, surrounded by plants, with tendrils dangling around our ears. Sue's work, of course, explores the power of nature to make us feel better. She runs the Surge Hill project, a garden and event space where local children and disadvantaged groups come to learn about the link between