Plants can change your life: a panel discussion
Last week I hosted an on-stage conversation about the positive, transformative power that gardening can have on your mental health. Here are the highlights
Hello, you’re reading The Earthworm, an alternative gardening newsletter that takes a sideways look at the world of plants. The Earthworm is an independent, reader-supported newsletter. That means no ads, no sponsored content, and no editorial direction from anyone other than yours truly. The two best ways that you can support the work I do is to share this post with a friend, or consider upgrading to a paid subscription (gaining access to exclusive content in the process). Thanks for reading.
I’ll bet there’s a solid chance that you’re already fully aware of the positive power that gardening can have on your mental health. Not even gardening: simply spending time in the company of plants, indoors or out, can cheer you up when you’re feeling down; bring you calm when you’re feeling stressed; and quiet your racing, spiralling, catastrophising anxiety. Of course, you know this.
You don’t need marketing execs to sell you the benefits of “Vitamin G” (as in Green). You don’t need to read the research, the studies, the news articles shared on social media.
You know that gardening can be slow and mindful, as when sowing seeds, or deadheading dahlias, or just watering your houseplants. You know that it can also be satisfyingly physical, as when digging up paving slabs, or untangling a climbing rose, or wrestling with a troublesome, deep-rooted weed. Either way, you feel good for having done it. You know that plants can improve your life.
But did you know that plants can change your life?
This was the theme of the panel discussion that I hosted last week for the UK-based charity Freedom from Torture (FfT). If you’re unfamiliar with FfT, it’s an incredible organisation that provides support (therapeutic, financial and legal) for asylum seekers and refugees who are survivors of torture. The charity also campaigns to raise awareness across the world about torture and its impact.
One of the life-enhancing creative therapies offered by Freedom from Torture is horticultural therapy. Here, service users attend weekly group gardening sessions, to complement the individual courses of counselling that they will already be receiving as part of the support they receive from FfT. Even for those who have experienced the most unimaginable trauma, spending time in a garden setting can help in meaningful, tangible and transformative ways.
Last week, for the first time, FfT opened a pop-up plant shop in Shoreditch, East London, called Give Torture the Green Finger. Members of the public could buy houseplants, learn about the work of the charity, and attend a series of workshops, talks and events – such as the one hosted by your friendly neighbourhood Earthworm: Plants can change your life.
Over the course of a fascinating and inspirational evening, I and the assembled audience heard from four people whose mental health has been improved – in some cases, their lives saved – by their experiences of gardening. We talked about rootedness, purpose, pride, perspective, community, and how nurturing plants can nourish the soul.
Below, you will find an edited transcript of that evening’s conversation. As with all of the interviews that I publish on The Earthworm, the dialogue has been edited for length and clarity only. I hope that you feel inspired by reading this conversation, as I was inspired by hearing it. If there is any demand, I may yet release the unedited audio version too, in podcast form.
But first, let’s meet the panel.
Omar attended garden therapy at Freedom from Torture as a service user between 2017-2019. Once a successful businessman selling furniture in his native Syria, he was arrested by Syrian officials, dragged away from his family and taken to a squalid underground cell with no light and a solid concrete bed. The guards accused Omar of funding terrorism. He was tortured daily for almost two weeks, until his uncle was eventually able to secure his release. Omar fled to the UK, where he became severely depressed and suicidal. Thankfully, after a combination of one-to-one therapy and garden therapy, Omar was slowly able to rebuild his life.
Karen is the horticultural therapist at Freedom from Torture, and runs the weekly gardening group at FfT’s centre in Finsbury Park, for refugees who have survived torture. She previously worked indoors as a Counselling Psychologist, before deciding to take her work outside.
Alex, also known as Alex the Plant Guy, quit his high-flying job in Dubai to sell plants around East London after experiencing a sudden trauma in his personal life. He is also Freedom from Torture’s resident plant expert, offering plant-care advice and running workshops for the duration of the charity’s plant pop-up.
Jason you may well already be familiar with, especially if you’ve been following The Earthworm for any length of time. I interviewed him back in May at the Chelsea Flower Show, where he was presenting his debut show garden. Better known to his thousands of social media followers as the Cloud Gardener, Jason’s gardening journey began two years ago, when he transformed his modest 18th storey balcony into a beautiful and bountiful garden. He is now a content creator, award-winning garden designer, and mental Health ambassador.
And now, without further ado, here’s the conversation.
Karen, can you please tell us about the work you do at Freedom from Torture as a horticultural therapist?
Karen: Many of the clients who arrive at Freedom from Torture will take part in individual therapy, but then horticultural therapy can complement or run alongside that. What we’re trying to do in our project is work in a very person-centred way, so it’s not just about clients coming into a garden, weeding, pruning – it’s about identifying the individual needs of each service user, and trying to tailor the work that we do in the garden to their particular needs so that we can support them on their journey to recovery.
Without wanting to sound glib, in what way is horticultural therapy different to just spending a bit of time in the garden?
Karen: I think it’s the way that we think about what clients are struggling with. So a lot of our clients will have post-traumatic stress symptoms. They will be struggling with anxiety, low mood, maybe panic attacks, a lot of fear around moving about in the day-to-day, particularly in London. So we want to provide a space that is relaxing; that helps ground people; that can enable them to tune into different parts of themselves that may have been lost through their experiences of torture; and actually rediscover the person that they were, previous to that.
So it works on a number of different levels. You’ve got the physical – being outdoors, the fresh air – but you’ve also got the psychological work that’s happening whilst we’re gardening together.
Omar, did you have any experience of gardening before you joined the horticultural therapy group as a service user?
Omar: Not like what they were teaching us at Freedom from Torture, like how deep to plant the bulbs and the seeds and stuff. But in my childhood we had a farm, and we had a garden in the house. I remember my grandma in the garden doing that work, and I remember picking fruit.
But coming to this group, after the trauma I had been through before I came to the UK, it just woke all these childhood memories up for me, and helped me. Like, it helped me to take the stress away, especially outside in the garden. The planting, spending the time outside, with other people… It was not unfamiliar, but at the same time it was something new to me.
You were part of the Freedom from Torture horticultural therapy group from 2017 to 2019. What were you going through at that time? And what impact did being part of that group have on your life?
Omar: I’m originally from the Middle East, where I experienced really big trauma – being arrested and tortured over there. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the group, but when I met other clients and they were in the same group and sharing all these stories, it just made it easier a little bit for me. And seeing also where other people were struggling in the same situation – it helped a lot, to be honest, because when you share your pain, it gets less.
I started doing the gardening in the house as well, like planting some vegetables, taking care of everything. So you carry it with you in the home. It does help when you are feeling stressed.
It’s been three years since your experience with Freedom from Torture ended – is gardening still part of your life?
Omar: Yes, I’m still gardening, I still learn. Now I prefer to plant something from the seed, not to buy, like, a small plant. Because when you plant something from the seed it’s like a new baby – you see it growing up and making flowers or fruit. It’s a different experience than just buying something and watering it.
Karen, obviously every individual service user who comes through Freedom from Torture has their own unique circumstances and history, but hearing Omar there, how common is his experience of horticultural therapy, in terms of what he gained from the group?
Karen: Something that happens for all the members that participate is that kind of opening up, particularly in the group setting. You can see people arrive feeling very internal, closed to others, not quite sure whether they can engage with other people, and I think working in the garden in a group setting, bit by bit people begin to feel more confident. You can see them opening up, maybe engaging with other people in the group, maybe with the therapists, and you can see people smile, as well, when perhaps they weren’t at the beginning. That has been something I’ve noticed a lot: I’m seeing more teeth!
Alex, what was it that ignited your passion for plants?
Alex: I Grew up in central London, and we didn’t have a garden. I guess my mother got me into plants, because she always had little houseplants around the house that she’d take care of, and I just had that in the background of my life growing up.
I went to university, and then I wanted to chase money, as most people do. I went over to Dubai, got a job as a brand manager in the electronics industry – it’s just as boring as it sounds – and then I had things happen in my life that were surreal, that were unexpected, that were traumatic.
So I did some soul-searching, and I came to the conclusion that money wasn’t everything, that there are much greater things in life: family, friends, love, experiences. And basically I ended up back with plants. Plants are the answer. Sooner or later, everyone turns towards nature; it’s better to get there sooner rather than later…
What were you gaining from the experience of tending to your houseplants? What were the plants giving you?
Alex: That’s a very good question. So, plants are fantastic. They’re nature. So what people generally think – and this is me too – is that life is crazy. But when I go round watering my plants, I’m disconnected from the world, all my thoughts are calm, because my mind is preoccupied with something else.
The reality is: life is a distraction, and dealing with plants and nature is real. I hope that makes sense. Stresses, workload, money, bills, so on, so forth – they’re not really real. They do affect you, but being in touch with nature I feel is the answer, and I feel that it will help people be more grounded, and re-evaluate priorities in life.
Jason, a modest-sized balcony, 18 storeys high, might not necessarily scream “garden” to people, and actually it didn’t to you until you discovered that it could become one. How and when did that happen for you?
Jason: For me, it started two years ago, during lockdown. So I’m one of the lockdown gardeners. I had just moved into this property, and then I went on furlough. So I took my little old self out to B&Q one day and I got some marigolds for my balcony. And then I began to understand how lucky I was to have outside space, because even in my own building, not everyone has a balcony. And I became really, really grateful for that space.
Now, my career was in hospitality. Having the time away, being on furlough, I began to understand how much I hated my job. When you’re a general manager in hospitality, you’re working 50, 60 hour weeks. You don’t have days off. And then you miss out on life events, you miss out on weekends, you miss out on birthdays, because you’re always working. And so I found that being able to spend time with nature began to help me, and so the balcony garden grew from being just marigolds to me learning and going on a journey of self-sufficiency on the balcony. And what I found was, having that kind of escape method, that really helped me.
As well as being a content producer and, following this year’s Chelsea and Tatton Park flower shows, a garden designer, you’re also a mental health ambassador for the charity Thrive. In what way is the work you do in your garden connected to the work you do with your own mental health?
Jason: Being on furlough made me address that I had anxiety and depression. And then what I realised was that by gardening, I was able to give myself a routine. I found that there would be some days that it would be really, really difficult to get up and out of bed, and what helped me was then I would make the thought process that I need to get up because I need to feed Chad – I name my plants, by the way. I think by naming them, they’re part of my family – it gives me more reason to get up and then start to look after them. And that can be the difference between me just staying in bed, to then me getting up and going out. But then it’s more than that. As Omar said, when you start to grow things from seed, you learn more, and there’s this idea of nurturing.
What I’ve found is that people tend to give up on their plants really quite early. I have an area of my balcony that I call the “struggle bus” area – anything that is struggling, I will move there, and it will get a whole load of TLC. And you will be surprised that 9 times out 10, these plants will find a way to bounce back. And what I’ve had to do is learn the correlation between what I’m doing with my plants and what I’m doing with myself. Sometimes I need to put that same energy that I’m putting into my plants back into myself, and then that’s what helps me to control my mental health.
You touched on something there that will be familiar to many people who have suffered depression: that feeling that you have no reason to get out of bed, that lack of motivation or purpose, and the fact that plants can give you that purpose. I was wondering whether that resonated with any of you: “I need to get up, because Chad needs me…”
Alex: Yeah, 100%. If you have to look after your plants and go water, it gets you out of bed, and gets you in the garden. Totally agree with that.
Karen: We planted cauliflower and purple sprouting broccoli and cavolo nero a few weeks back, and we had created these frames to protect it all from the pigeons, the cabbage whites, the foxes, the cats, whatever we have coming into the garden. And this client had come in this week, and had said: “I’ve been thinking about these plants over the week and whether the frame would protect them from the torrential rain that we’ve had.” And he had really wanted to get out, to have a look, to see how they were doing. So yes, it’s that: taking it home, thinking about it, having that purpose.
Omar: I had the same thing when I was at Freedom from Torture. In the summertime, when the heat would happen, I volunteered to go and water the garden twice a week, between our sessions on Thursday. This is one of the things I always feel: the garden, you keep thinking about it. You go home and the first thing you do sometimes is you go into the garden and water it. It needs you.
If you’re in a difficult place, mentally, your focus tends to be on yourself. It’s interesting to think that actually, your mental health can begin to improve when you start to think more outside of yourself, including how your actions might impact others, and even the wider environment.
Alex: Some people have children, some people have pets, some people have other responsibilities in life… Plants give you an avenue to nurture and care for something other than yourself, which you need.
Omar: Yeah, and that takes your stress out, sometimes, because your mind becomes busy thinking about other things: about the garden, watering, weeding. So yes, sometimes you might be stressed, or affected by your trauma, but gardening takes you out of that. I could spend the whole day in the garden just looking after my garden. I really enjoy it. I don’t want to be interrupted, I just want to stay there. When I left Freedom from Torture, one of the first things was: I want a garden. It’s part of my life.
It’s all very well talking about the positive impact that gardening has on your mental wellbeing – and it obviously does – but I think it’s worth acknowledging that sometimes, things go wrong. Be it down to pests, or the weather, or your own over-watering, plants that you love sometimes die. How do you deal with that disappointment, especially if your mental state is already fairly fragile?
Jason: As well as it being really great to garden, being honest as well, sometimes my garden can also reflect my mental state. So if I am not top notch, my garden will not be top notch. It sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud, but there becomes this level of anxiety that you think: “I’ve got so much to do in the garden – oh I’ll just leave it until tomorrow, or I’ll leave it until next week,” and then it never gets done, and it just builds and builds and builds and builds.
And so a lot of the time on social media I will show that, I’ll share that, and then people will respond and I’ll think: “OK guys, let’s break it down into one piece at a time. Let’s go and do dead-heading today.” And then we’ll go and do our dead-heading, and then we feel like we’ve achieved something.
There's an element on social media, when it comes to the gardening world, of fakeness. A lot of people will take lots of pictures of their garden, and then they’re filtering it. I don’t do any of that on my social media. I will quite happily stand there, posting pictures of myself holding dead plants, because that actually happens. And so what I’m always really conscious of, especially because of how much I failed at the beginning is, if I’m going to encourage a whole load of people to start balcony gardening, and I only show them the plus sides, they’re going to assume that gardening is easy, that everything is perfect, so when something goes wrong, they’ll take it to heart.
Alex: It’s all a learning curve. Generally, houseplants won’t die outright. They might not be happy, so you’re going to learn something new as they evolve and grow. If you’ve killed it, then you’ve learnt a hard lesson. But luckily we’re gifted with access to plants that we can easily just go away and try and start again.
Karen: For me, disappointment is just part of gardening. If there’s a plant that isn’t very happy, I will acknowledge that and notice and say, “OK, I see you’re not doing too well”. But then I will always notice something next-door to it that is absolutely thriving, and that then lifts my mood again. Because alongside disappointment there’s also hope: the two seem to live side by side somehow in the garden.
Gardening tends to be something that we do alone. Which, if you’re experiencing loneliness or isolation, might not necessarily be that helpful. Omar, I’d be keen to hear from you about the group work that you did and how that compares to your experience now of gardening by yourself.
Omar: With one of my friends, we’ll sit down and say: “What do you grow? What do you plant?” It’s nice, giving tips in the garden. Like my friend said to me, “use the front garden, it has more sun than the back garden,” and that’s what I did and now I’ve got loads of vegetables in my front garden. So it’s something which you can share and talk about. It’s a social thing.
Karen: I think there’s something about gardening with other people that adds another layer. So yes I think it’s wonderful to see things happen for yourself in your own garden, but when you can share that with someone else, it’s just a whole other level.
Alex, you grew up without a garden. Jason, you live 18 floors above ground. Omar, you found yourself living in a foreign country, far from home. And yet, has gardening, or working with plants, to some degree given you all a feeling of rootedness? How important has that connection been to the “land”, to the soil?
Alex: Yeah, it gets you back in touch with nature and reality. It keeps you grounded. Sometimes, my head’s up in the clouds, and when I come back to deal with my plants, it grounds me.
Jason: When I started off gardening on the balcony, I was predominantly going for self-sufficiency, but then I realised that, in actual fact, I had zero wildlife in my garden. And so over the course of the two years I’ve had to learn to incorporate flowers into the garden in order to attract biodiversity. Now, up there in the garden, I get to be grounded in the sense I get to see all this wildlife that I’m responsible for in my garden. And that is what keeps me in awe of nature, because I think, “wow, I’m literally witnessing this whole David Attenborough documentary unfold in my garden.”
Omar: Some of the things I picked up from Freedom from Torture, I took home with me and applied them in my life, like how to organise my garden. It’s made me feel like it belongs to me. Even though I’m renting this space, when you plant something from seed, it makes you belong to this place, or feel attached to it more than anywhere else.
There’s one thing I would say: when I was in the group, every time I used to plant anything, I used to not wear any gloves – just do it with bare hands. When you touch the soil, feel it, it’s a totally different experience than wearing the gloves. You feel more connected with the plants and the soil as well. Sometimes, I take my shoes off and step on the grass – it just takes your stress out, and makes you feel more connected to the garden.
For more information about Freedom from Torture, check out this link. To find out how you can support their valuable work, or to donate, follow this link.
Have plants changed your life? Maybe you wouldn’t go quite that far, but have you at least felt the magical influence that gardening can have on your mental wellbeing? Stories of mental ill health can be highly personal and difficult to discuss, but if you’d like to share your own experiences for the benefit of others, then please do make use of the button below.
So glad you shared this! It was the next best thing to being there live!
Hello Dan, thanks for this wonderful post. I gave you a shoutout this morning in my Hump day gratitude post. Here is the link. https://waywardyogini.substack.com/p/hump-day-gratitude-5ab