Sue Stuart-Smith: The Well-Gardened Mind

21ST ANNUAL WINTER LECTURE SERIES: GARDENS OF MEANING
January 28, 2021
Distinguished psychiatrist and avid gardener Sue Stuart-Smith believes our minds and our gardens interact in ways that can sustain our innermost selves. Her beautifully written UK bestseller, The Well Gardened Mind, offers inspiring perspectives on the power of gardening to change people’s lives. For Stuart-Smith, a garden is much more than a beloved physical space. It is a mental space where you can hear your thoughts immersed in the primal awareness not only of nature’s beauty, but the eternal cycle of the seasons. Informed by literature, neuroscience and her experiences as therapist and gardener, she celebrates the joys of gardening, but also the life-affirming benefits of tending plants-physical, psychological and metaphorical.
Before practicing as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Sue Stuart-Smith received her degree in English literature at Cambridge. Over the past 30 years, she has worked with her husband, leading UK garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith, on their wonderful Barn Garden in Hertfordshire.