LINDA STUART: Being here and being able to just sit quietly

and have this wonderful vision of colour and light, it was just

very calming and helped me to get a sense of perspective on

what lay ahead and what was going to happen to me and to

feel hopeful and sure that I would survive. Really, I don't

know how I would have managed without being able to come here.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Let's get something straight. You don't

have to be a gardener to enjoy being in a garden. Hi, I'm

Ranger Rosie Holdsworth and I love being outdoors, wherever

that may be. For today's episode, I'm handing you over to

Heather Burkett, who's Gardens And Outdoor Manager at Acorn

Bank in Cumbria. She's going to find out more about how being in

gardens has so many benefits.

Heather's meeting Linda Stuart at Packwood in the West

Midlands.

Linda's a mum, a wife, a granny who's faced her fair share of

challenges in life.

But on three separate occasions, she credits the gardens we're

visiting today with saving her.

Welcome to the Wild Tale of green therapy, the healing power

of gardens.

HEATHER BIRKETT: Just entered the

most exquisite walled garden.

Masses of grasses and purple flowers really shining in the

early morning light.

And I can follow the path up to a big square garden full of

immaculately trimmed topiary yew trees. They really are

fantastic.

And through years and years of pruning and trimming, you can

end up with these dense, solid sculptural objects that really

add dimensions of height and grandeur to a garden.

But also, what a fantastic place to play in. I can just imagine

playing hide and seek in here with my kids.

And speaking of hide and seek, I feel I may have a bit of a game

on my hands to find Linda. But she's given me a clue to meet

her by the Master Yew.

And just a hundred metres or so through the yews, she was, of

course, where she said she would be.

Hello, you must be Linda.

LINDA STUART: Oh, hi.

HEATHER BIRKETT: How lovely to meet you. I'm Heather. You're a

regular visitor here.

LINDA STUART: Well, I'm here pretty much every day, Heather,

actually. The first time I drove through the gates I was

instantly drawn and I've remained very attached to

Packwood over 40 years.

I've moved down here in the 1970s from Newcastle. My husband

got a job as a local GP. We used to come when the children were

little and they particularly liked the yew tree garden. I

mean, they knew the story, you know, Jesus and the feeding of

the multitude with five loaves and two fishes. And they loved

the idea that these trees represented the multitudes. And

the large oak, well, they used to call it the Jesus tree.

They also used to love tearing around the place and playing

hide and seek. But their favourite game, particularly for

my son, was to tear up the pathway that leads the top of

the Jesus tree and be the first one to get to the top. So it was

really part of my life as a young mother, really.

HEATHER BIRKETT: Did it feel like a second home?

LINDA STUART: Oh absolutely. Packwood is my second home. It

doesn't feel like a second home. It is my second home. So I'm

here most days. Now I've got grandchildren. I spend quite a

bit of time in London, but when I'm home, I come here.

HEATHER BIRKETT: But as well as turning to Packwood in her

happiest times, Linda has used the garden to get through some

really tough times in her life. The first when her youngest

child, her son, has some devastating news in his 20s.

LINDA STUART: When he was 24 was diagnosed with cancer. He had to

have surgery in London and he came to live at home and had

chemotherapy. A diagnosis of cancer is a terrible shock to

the individual and to a family. And you feel that your life's

been fractured and control's been taken away from you. And

you get very fearful and anxious and worried.

It's like you're in a foreign country. You don't have a map to

find your way around. People speak a different language, you

know, about markers and blood tests. I remember coming here in

the days before he started his chemotherapy. I think it's well

known now, isn't it, that actually being in green spaces,

being in gardens, being in nature generally, it's really

good for your physical health and your mental health in

everyday life. But I think that it's particularly true when

you're struggling with a personal crisis, a family

crisis.

Being in this space helped me to cope with that crisis. This

garden, I think, has been in existence for centuries and I

remember thinking that women like me have probably come to

this place over centuries and they've been mothers and they

would have worries and concerns and they would come here and

unburden themselves probably.

And that I was just one person in a whole sort of history of

women struggling with the problems that life brings. And

so it helps you to get things into perspective. It's so

difficult here not to lose yourself into the landscape. And

it's a very calming and restorative landscape for me.

HEATHER BIRKETT: There's something about spending time,

quiet time, in green spaces that is a gentle kind of peace, isn't

it? With the background noise of the bees buzzing and the

lawnmower going in the background. That gives you

something to focus on, I think.

LINDA STUART: Yes.

HEATHER BIRKETT: Allows your mind to switch off that internal

monologue.

LINDA STUART: And just being silent, being quiet, actually

stills your mind.

HEATHER BIRKETT: Linda's son goes on to make a full recovery,

and he's now in his 40s with a family of his own. But it isn't

the only family crisis Linda is to face.

Life is about to throw another diagnosis her way, and this time

it's her own.

As we head away from the Jesus tree and back towards the house.

It becomes clear Linda turns to a different part of the garden

to help her cope this time.

Packwood is a garden of many different spaces. Is there

particular places here that mean more to you than others, apart

from the Jesus you?

LINDA STUART: Yes, yeah, well particularly these borders I

think.

HEATHER BIRKETT: What I'm looking at the minute at is the

golden yellow of Stipa gigantea, peppered through with purples of

sages and oreganos, the little bit of silver here and there.

LINDA STUART: I'm really impressed that you have all the

botanical names. I don't. But at the height of summer, you get

some vivid oranges, some bright oranges and some reds. You get a

lovely view of the borders if you sit on the benches in front

of the house.

HEATHER BIRKETT: And it's this spot Linda turns to when she

gets her own devastating news.

LINDA STUART: So in 2013, I was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

It was affecting my speech and my vision and my balance. It had

to be removed. I was comforted by the fact that the tumour was

benign. So, you know, hopefully once it was out, I would be able

to get on with my life. But brain surgery is a bit scary. It

was a shock, you know, it was a tremendous shock.

And there was, again, this sense of fear, I guess. And concern

and anxiety about what lay ahead. Again, I would come to

the garden and I would sit on a bench in front of the house and

look at the borders. And they were just so beautiful. Being

here and being able to just sit quietly and just have this

wonderful vision of colour and light.

It was a particularly beautiful June, if I remember. It was

just, again, very calming and helped me to get a sense of

perspective on what lay ahead and what was going to happen to

me. And to feel hopeful and sure that I would survive. Really, I

don't know how I would have managed without being able to

come here and just be comforted and encouraged by the beauty of

nature at Packwood.

HEATHER BIRKETT: Linda's health is boosted from simply being in

a garden. But as a gardener myself, I want to find out more

about the benefits of the act of gardening. So we walk through

Packwood to find someone who knows about the power of

gardening.

So this garden means so much to you. You love being here. Are

you a gardener yourself?

LINDA STUART: I'd hesitate to say I was a gardener. I have a

garden and I love my garden and I spend a lot of time in it. And

I grow a lot of things in pots and at different heights. I can

gain heights by putting pots up on bricks. But, you know, I'm

not a professional by any means.

HEATHER BIRKETT: Well, it looks like we've really stumbled

across a gardener.

LIZ WARE: Hello.

HEATHER BIRKETT: You must be Robin.

LIZ WARE: Yes, I'm Robin.

HEATHER BIRKETT: Hi, Robin. I'm Heather.

Linda and I were just commenting on how the colours in these

borders really sing and they seem to really tie into the

architecture of the house as well.

ROBYN BOOTH: They do. I really like the fact that it kind of

picks out some of the more golden tones and the render of

the house. If you have a look at the lead pipework and some of

the silvery colours in the wooden frames. That's also

picked up in the planting as well. So we've got lots of

silvery tones. So it's all kind of about bringing in what you

can see around you in the wider landscape and letting that

inform your planting.

HEATHER BIRKETT: It must be a wonderful place to work, though.

ROBYN BOOTH: It is. I'm really lucky to be here. I wasn't

always a gardener. I used to be a primary school teacher.

It feels like another lifetime, really. But whilst I was in that

career, I was really struggling with my mental health. And

that's how I kind of discovered gardening. I live in the centre

of Birmingham in a busy city and I have a balcony.

And it was whilst I was pottering about on there with a

few plants that I thought, oh, I'm actually starting to feel a

bit more like myself again. So I started volunteering at local

gardens and did some RHS courses. And then eventually it

felt like this was what I needed to do.

And after some training, I got lucky and a job came up at

Packwood. And it just felt like a dream come true, to be honest,

to be able to work here and still kind of have a few pinch

me moments now and then as well.

When you're a gardener, it can feel a little bit like you've

got so many jobs to do and you're focusing on getting that

done and making it look great for the visitors. But it's also

really important to take a step back and to just be in the space

sometimes and just think, look at the light on that, look at

the colour of this, look at that bee, and just having those

moments throughout the day because it just feels like it's

a part of you and it feels like if you're not doing it, you just

don't feel quite yourself.

HEATHER BIRKETT: And do you feel that working in gardens now and

working at Packwood supports your mental health now?

ROBYN BOOTH: Oh, 100%, definitely. Even if it's just

simple tasks like deadheading or weeding, which I personally

really enjoy. It's actually quite meditative. It gives you

that space to kind of just think things through and process your

thoughts. And you often feel a sense of calmness, peace

afterwards.

And maybe you've been able to kind of work through a niggly

problem in your mind or something. There's been a bit of

research into it about having a certain level of complexity in

the task that keeps you absorbed, but it's not so much

that you're getting quite stressed and anxious about it.

HEATHER BIRKETT: Linda? Does this ring a bell for you?

LINDA STUART: Oh, absolutely. You're talking about gardening

being good for your mental health, which reminds me of the

time after my surgery. I just rather naively thought that once

it was out, it was out, and I'd just get on with my life. And I

discovered that actually it wasn't like that at all.

My brain was very racy and fizzy and lots of thoughts just

jumbling around in my head. And I had some help from a

neurologist and we came up with a program which was largely just

exactly what you were saying about being in a garden, being

in a green space and just being able to relax and be quiet, to

find little places where I could be on my own.

Nature has a pattern. There's a rhythm to the seasons and

there's a calmness to that process. And actually walking,

walking helped me hugely. I would, in the winter, I would

pull on my wellies and just walk across the fields and just

putting one foot in front of the other was helpful. You know, it

helped to calm me and to still that kind of fizzy part of my

brain.

ROBYN BOOTH: I couldn't agree with you more, to be honest,

about having that time outside. It feels like something that's

quite vital to me. What you said really resonated with me about

how you felt with your your thoughts and everything kind of

rushing in that was something that I found really difficult,

but when I was outside or when I was gardening it was something

changed in my brain chemistry I suppose and it was like oh I can

take a breath and I can be me again.

HEATHER BIRKETT: As I leave Robin behind, feeling like we'd

had a bit of a heart-to-heart and put the world to rights, and

Linda and I head off to explore more of Packwood, I'm reminded

of the calmness and peace of mind that can come from being

outside.

The way you talk about this space reminds me very much of

the place I work, which is Acorn Bank near Penrith, and we find,

and our visitors often talk about, the sense of tranquility

and serenity, it really oozes peace and quiet. And there's one

place in particular that personally I feel it, and that's

in the herb garden where there's a beautiful Portuguese quince

tree. We have some benches below that, and it's just a really

lovely place to sit. And in 2016, we actually signed that

space up to the Silent Space project.

LIZ WARE: Silent Space is a charity, and we work with

gardens that are open to the public and we encourage them to

keep an area where people can be silent. It's a little bit like

the quiet carriage on a train. The people in the space are

silent but the sounds of the garden and the world beyond go

on around them.

I'm Liz Ware. I'm a garden writer and historian and I'm the

founder of Silent Space.

So the reason we know from a scientific point of view that

Silent Space works is because there's plenty of neuroscience

to show that taking time to reflect is important. The best

summary of that that I've heard is by a business psychologist

who says that our body and our brain is at its best if our

brain is following a pattern that goes think, reflect, think,

reflect.

How often do we do that?

The minute we have five minutes, we're checking our phones

because we've got that pressure all the time to feel we should

be doing something. Being in nature is, we know, very good

for us, lowers our stress levels, our cortisol levels.

But there was some research in the late 1980s, I think, came up

with the idea of something called gentle or soft

fascination. When we're in nature, just quietly, there's

something about the fluttering of the leaves or the birdsong

that just distracts us a little bit. So if we were quietly in a

room without any distraction, we might start to spiral down into

overthinking.

But when we're in nature, there's just enough of a

distraction to let us reflect quietly, but also distract us a

little bit from sinking downwards, which is amazing

really, isn't it? Green is good for us, but biodiversity is even

better.

So if you bring all these different things together, we're

reflecting, we're outside, we're in a biodiverse place, it's good

for us. But I would also like to say that it's good for nature.

And we mustn't forget that. When we're quiet, we cause less

disturbance. And then we see more. We care more.

HEATHER BIRKETT: I want to see more of Packwood's garden and

countryside, potential places to sit silently.

Have you got any more places in the garden that you'd like to

show me?

LINDA STUART: Well, actually, maybe just one place, Heather,

and that's my secret bench. So maybe we should take a walk over

there and we can sit on my bench.

HEATHER BIRKETT: So we leave the borders and the yews behind,

head down a path towards the house and take a sharp left.

LINDA STUART: So we follow this yew tree hedge, and round the

corner we will find this quiet space.

HEATHER BIRKETT: And this is the space Linda sought solace in

when a third huge life event was thrown her way. Except this

time, it's something all of us experience.

LINDA STUART: So this is my secret bench, and I thought we

could just sit on there for a while and take in the views. Do

you want to have a seat?

HEATHER BIRKETT: Oh yes, please.

LINDA STUART: Okay.

HEATHER BIRKETT: Sitting on Linda's secret bench, which

won't be so secret anymore, she tells me how important this part

of the garden becomes to her in March 2020.

LINDA STUART: In Covid, they removed all the benches. This

one's hard to remove because it's kind of nailed down,

really. I remember, you know, on the Monday, we knew that Boris

Johnson was going to lock us down, and indeed he did that

evening. I did find a way of regularly coming here, but

walking on the footpaths around the estate.

And I would bring my own coffee and I would actually sit in the

bench in the churchyard, Packwood churchyard. I really

missed coming into the garden. And I discovered that there was

a crack in an old gate and I could actually see through to

the borders. And I think we were finally allowed back into public

spaces at about June. So I do remember through this crack in

the door, seeing the borders coming to life and when they

finally opened the doors, honestly, I just remember crying

with just joy at being able to come back into Packwood.

But this bench is a place where I come when I want to be quiet

and just sort of read or think. It's actually off the beaten

track. Not many people come this way. So it's very quiet and very

calming.

My brain can still get quite racy and fizzy. And I know that

I have to just distance myself from other people and sit

quietly. And so this is where I come.

HEATHER BIRKETT: Linda, it's been so nice to meet you and to

share your Packwood. Thank you so much for showing me around.

LINDA STUART: Well, it's been a joy.

HEATHER BIRKETT: Just before you go, tell me, are you well now?

LINDA STUART: Yes, Heather, I am. Thank you for asking. I feel

very well. My life's changed hugely since the time of my

diagnosis because being Granny just fills my life with joy. It

is such fun. It's all the joy and none of the responsibility.

It's lovely. I think it's fair to say that you never totally

recover from brain surgery. You kind of learn to live with it. I

just need to make sure that I have some quiet time.

HEATHER BIRKETT: Inspired by Linda's story and how she uses

the garden and outdoor space at Packwood, the garden team have

set aside two areas to be a Silent Space, including Linda's

now not-so-secret bench.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Wild Tales. If you'd

like to hear more inspiring stories about being in nature,

why not try listening to Nature Fix, another podcast from the

National Trust.

Follow Wild Tales or Nature Fix or both, on your favourite

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