COLUMNISTs: DAVID GALLACHER AND TOM WILLIAMSON
Many large, mental health hospitals from late Victorian times had wonderful garden greenhouses, and walled gardens where patients were encouraged to work outside to help them in their recovery.
I served my apprenticeship in the mid-1970s working in commercial gardening learning to grow plants - mostly bedding plants, trees, and shrubs - for commercial landscaping projects.
Many of the projects we carried out involved landscaping the outside of factories in order that the workers in the factories had a nice landscaped area outside to sit or walk in during their lunch breaks.
After some years, I moved to take up the position of head gardener at a large hospital. We planted thousands of roses, and created patios and seating areas, for patients, visitors, and staff to escape the pressures of ward life. We created small gardens around the geriatric wards for residents to enjoy, watch, feel, and smell flowers and plants (the fancy name now is a sensory garden).
Then in the late 1990s, many health boards decided to grass over these flower beds, to rip out the roses, and to slab the areas outside, claiming they were too expensive to maintain. If only they had realised they were destroying more than decades of planting.
And now they are putting patios, flower beds, and seating back in.
After this, I moved into training, for what became the best ten years of my horticulture career. I started working with a mental health charity, delivering gardening training to people who were suffering from many different mental health problems such as depression and suicidal tendencies, as well those in alcohol and drug recovery.
Working with other charities, day centres, social services, and mental health hospitals, we worked with hundreds of keen gardeners, helping them to improve their social skills, self esteem, and confidence.
Myself and other staff developed training programmes and recognised training certificates for Occupational Therapy staff linked to gardening.
Courses lead to recognised certificates for our new found gardeners as we developed vocational qualifications based on practical skills, leading to Scotvec and City and Guild certifications. We were even able to engage young teenagers who were expelled from school, offering them the opportunity to gain certificates, and even had a few who achieved awards in gardening later in their careers.
So successful were the programmes that the new government at the time decided to stop funding, and so not quite ending our therapeutic gardening training, but reducing the opportunities available.
Garden therapy as an idea has made a dramatic return, could many of today’s problems have been prevented or reduced if only the potential of gardens had been raised earlier?
Gardens are special, peaceful spaces with restorative qualities that can help with everyday stress.
Gardening is therapeutic, it should be available to everyone, just think of the millions that could be saved in unnecessary medication.
Hopefully government can realise this potential and develop some of the old proven ideas and merge them with the new, to create social gardens in every community, by appointing a social garden officer at government level to develop the ideas, working together with community groups.
The benefits to individuals, groups, communities, wildlife, and the environment, all through gardens and gardening, are numerous. We hope you find gardening as therapeutic as we do.
Located in Bonnybridge, Central Scotland, is a small garden with over 630 different plants, 200 containers, and 30 hanging baskets. Tom Williamson has been developing the garden over the last 35 years, working with David Gallacher over the last 10 to create its unique look.
Tom is a keen gardener, planting where he thinks a plant will be happy. David is a time-served gardener in commercial gardens and landscaping. In their regular column, Tom and David unlock the secrets of their garden and their success with plants.
For more updates on their garden, follow David and Tom in ‘Tom’s Hidden Garden’ Facebook Group.