Therapy-Based Gardening

Some parts of this article have been pieced together through 'snippets' taken from others that I have written and published, with Vocal. But each 'little snippet' was chosen by myself because any readers of mine can easily understand that, what I have produced thus far has been 'grown' from my experience & knowledge that working in psychiatry has given to me over the years.

Drawing upon this skills base I am entering this into the 'Create your Happiness' challenge - primarily because of the developed skills & the time-consuming hobby/craft/pass time (call it what you will) that mindfulness and gardening, deserve to have their symbiotic relationship widely recognized.

I have recently published an article entitled: What is Mindfulness through Nature's Point of View (simply click to read it) which within that one, also discusses & links to another article

Until in 2020, when I contracted Covid-19 from work. After time spent in hospital and oxygen therapy, I was finally on the other side of the hospital bed - I was no longer the nurse helping others in a bed. I made attempts after 7-months of recovery of going back to work on phased returns and adaptations to help my work life easier to manage, but it proved too much to deal with. In March of 2021, I finally needed to call it a day - after I had spent many years talking to people about how important their own health was to them; it was not long before the same talk was being had with me by another professional caring for me. And so, and with much to my regret, I resigned on ill-health grounds from work.

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And this is exactly what home had in store for me:

Okay, so from the very outset of taking a good long stare at my garden, I understood my limits came to a grinding halt when it came to chopping trees down - which were so desperately needed to be chopped - because they were literally stealing the natural light and denying the bramble and shrubs under the trees, any share of the sun's rays (and remember this being in Britain, there is a major scarcity of the sun!!) Anyone having studied Biology at school will recall that plants, shrubs, flowers - and the list goes on - need natural light to establish photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is the process by which every plant making its own food.

The support from the area parks team actually found a wall behind all the trees and a very tangled wire fencing that had been entwined within it. A log quite clearly showed part of one of the trees which had literally grown through the fencing itself; something I never knew trees could do until now!

And this then presented me with a new way forward, one of many since that moment - Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT)

In the past few years as part of my last post and toward meeting my Nurses & Midwifery Council (NMC) Revalidation requirements, I had attended and completed a week-long university face-to-face participatory course in DBT (Train the Trainer) qualification. I recalled the part of the training all about Mindfulness. This is where you can learn in a more focused manner, which involves the person making a special effort to notice what's happening in the present moment in time (within your mind, body, and in your surroundings.)

Simple day-to-day things such as:

1 - take time out from your busy schedules to smell the flowers or roses growing within your garden

2 - yes even pay attention to the grass, how green does it appear, touch the blades growing, how do they feel, even smell to you

3 - what does the sky look like, does it appear bright, cheerful, or grey and angry around you

4 - look up at the formation of each cloud, their colour, depth, can you form images within your mind of just what they conjure up in your mind's eye

5 - breathing exercises can be easily carried out in your garden, allowing you to smell the very air around you, allowing you to tune into what nature is surrounding you, and has to offer you

6 - just how does all this make feel

And the list can carry on, it becomes more about finding out where you suddenly fit into life. So as you can see, mindfulness has many avenues that can help you manage and learn to become at peace with yourself, it has turned out that writing on VOCAL has proven a good mindfulness technique for me, enabling me to discuss just how my garden makes me feel & have a platform to explore it on & to share what I have learned with others - in being able to support others too.

So to the garden, it is... and our garden has been shouting out my name for many years believe me! I find that now I am not working, it causes stress in itself - living off the UK Government benefits system (well, the less said about that, the better!)

Our garden has my time now (sorry I should more accurately say, Vocal and our garden) have shared daily time from now on! And my god, the garden(s) are one hell of a challenge to take on after so many years of neglect. As I cannot walk well, and cannot stand for long periods, my wife takes my disability chair into the garden for me to rest on when I need to. It is beautiful to mow the grass down, get rid of those nettles that used to keep saying 'Hi there I'm the nettles, we're taking over mate!' Just to simply sit in the garden and 'watch the world go by,' with a cup of coffee in my hand, being able to have a long meaningful chat with my wife who has always been there for me throughout my nursing career, never wavering from her endless love and care. I would now at this point in my life never ask for anything or anyone more than I do now.

So as you can see, for any one of us who find themselves in this position, there is always hope through the dark times in our lives. Therapy knowledge or going through therapy can support you, and help you discover how to access your inner peace within yourself when you really need it to find the real you.

Being able to take up tackling our gardens at home, has helped me to help myself toward building both my inner mental health & my physical health too.

It has become a project within me that holds greater importance for my own healing now, after the devastating attack that Covid-19 left me with, ending a psychiatric nursing career that has spanned 1989 - 2021.

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It has been purely coincidental for me to have taken up this project as I said above to 'help myself...my inner mental health & my physical health,' and that the gardening tools have been purchased through Fiskars but, I can only admit truthfully in saying that, having purchased many tools from this company, both my wife & I have discovered just how strong, hard-wearing and durable their products are - being left with my physical disabilities, their tools are easy to use too (this is not in any way me sponsoring Fiskars) just me honestly saying that I would highly recommend them to anyone who wants to take on the forest in your garden! Simple, honest & plain speaking from the start.

I can openly tell you that the bush & hedge shears from Fiskars made very short work of the growth behind our garden shed - it had the effect of slicing through butter when cutting down a decade of growth. I've bought many tools from other companies that just could not manage this task before, the end result - they just snapped into pieces & gave up the challenge.

The next image I took, just showed the hardness of the rocky soil that had been discovered under the years of bramble & hedge growth. We have had spades before that just would NOT even dent the soil because it was so hard but, the pointed blade from Fiskars actually made short work of it in the end.

Once again, the image below was a 'before' picture of what lay in wait under those nettles before getting the pointed blade in. The shears bought from Fiskars made short work of the nettle growth - you could have simply snapped your fingers because that was how simple that job was tackled.

Now for the current moment at least, because the good old British weather pattern is extremely predictable when it comes to rain - rain has temporarily stopped play (excuse the tennis pun) in our garden project.

But the image taken below shows just what I had started to do with our new smart-fit weed puller; before the heavens opened, turning our hometown area into a scene out of Noah's Ark. Between the concreted slabs which made up the front garden path areas, good old weeds found their way through the cracks in the slabs. Fiskars simply had a tool for it did they not? I actually cannot recall ever having a weed puller that ever worked in achieving this with such ease. From watching my parents attempt to dig up weeds that had grown up through the pavement cracks, in our home when I was much younger (erm, yes... much younger!)

I suppose that all I have left to say is that when the rain stops (and I cannot stress the word 'when') there are still many tools that are left needing to buy, to complete our garden project. A garden project that we are both proud of and which provides limitless areas in rediscovering nature & mindfulness activities - to help every one of us through the times in our lives that we all struggle with. And of course, this does take money - an evil necessity in our modern-day lives today. But thankfully, in addition, I have rediscovered my love for writing too - enabling mindfulness to be felt and utilized in writing areas; even when the British weather system stops you from your garden project for the time being.

Try this all out for yourselves and see what good you can achieve for your own mental & physical health.

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