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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