A Therapist’s Garden by Erik Keller isn’t quite what I expected it to be, I thought there would be more in the way of horticulture in it, but it was still a fairly entertaining and interesting read.
The author manages the gardens and horticultural therapy programme at Ann’s Place, Danbury CT, so the weather and planting seasons don’t exactly match up with my experiences of gardening in Scotland, I’ve just about given up on growing any vegetables as sometimes it doesn’t even get warm enough for the seeds to germinate! The book is split up into monthly sections.
Erik Keller works with all sorts of vulnerable people of all ages such as patients with cancer, children with challenging emotional problems, the elderly and the very young. So a lot of this book is him explaining how he dealt with difficult situations with his many clients and usually managed to turn what could have been an upsetting ordeal into a learning experience which often added to the person’s development. As people get their hands in the soil it calms them without them really realising it and they learn patience and concentration which hopefully will be transferable in different situations.
I know that in Britain the pandemic has had a silver lining of making millions of new gardeners as people in lockdown looked for ways of not going mad with boredom. That often neglected patch of land out the back that they didn’t have time to do anything with became a mental health lifesaver for so many. Actually I think people have been prescribed ‘gardening’ on the NHS, it’s a lot cheaper and healthier than anti-depressants and is probably more efficacious!
My thanks to Black Rose Writing and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy of this book for review.