EXCLUSIVE!
THE DARK UNDERBELLY IN THE CONNECTION BETWEEN GARDENING & MENTAL HEALTH!
THE DIFFICULT TRUTH NO-ONE WILL  ACKNOWLEDGE!

Yes…It is Mental Health Week & you are bound to hear a lot of soft talk about the mental health benefits of gardening…which is without doubt “True” of course…but like most axiomatic “Truths”…the “Real Truth” is much more nuanced.

Of course, there being “nothing new under the sun”…there is nothing new about saying that there is a benefit to Mental Health to be gained from “Beauty”, “The Great Out-Doors” & “Gardening”. This is why all the “Mental Asylums” of the 19th Century were surrounded by beautiful, extensive & expensive gardens designed by the  best Landscape Designers of their time…(whilst the most needy of the “inmates” were dressed in rags and chained to the wall).

So the knowledge that gardening has a benefit for Mental Health goes back a long way….but this week you will hear it spoken of as if it is the result of “cutting edge” research!  What you will not hear spoken about anywhere, this week, or at any other time…is the other side of the coin when it comes to the connection between Mental Health & Gardening…& that is O.C.G.D….Or Obsessive Compulsive Gardening Disorder!

It can strike any keen gardener at any time & worst of all there seems no documented cure!

I’ve seen it destroy friendships, marriages, families & deeply divide communities. I’ve seen otherwise rational people turn over their whole “yard”…you couldn’t possibly call it a garden…to a veritable sea of polystyrene boxes filled  with a collection of plants with impossible to pronounce Latin names & often requiring a magnifying glass to differentiate one from the other…In the case of cacti, succulents & carnivorous plant aesthetics is not even a factor….In fact the uglier the better!

As a nurseryman I’ve sold plants to women who must take their purchases out of their pots before taking them home so that their husband/spouses do not find plant-pots in the wheelie-bin & therefore catch them out. Like any addiction or gambling it leads to secretiveness & deceit.

I have known perfectly happy well-adjusted gardeners who take off on their big overseas adventure only to return poor haunted creatures unable to appreciate their lovely gardens any more… & determined to tear it all out & replace it all with a detailed facsimile of something they have seen whilst away…often spending more on the garden make-over than their once in a lifetime overseas trip.

Needless to say a few years down the line these poor sufferers are completely disillusioned. Despite superhuman efforts & destroying their previously superb garden; their 17th Century French Rose Garden does not actually surround a lovely stone Villa…nor is it protected from the elements by a high stone wall…nor does it look out on a Medieval Provencal town…or a walled Convent! The savannah is not roamed by lion & gazelle. There is no view of a snow-covered Mt Fuji in the background & the cherry blossom only last a couple of days because of the hot winds in October.The dry Spanish hills have no Crusader Castle on the crag….& the verdant Balinese jungle idyll looks like it has been subject to Napalm attack twice a year…in the winter because of the frost & in the summer because of the north wind.

But worst of all for the O.C.G.D. sufferer is the “Event”…The Garden Opening or, worse still, the Garden Wedding are the most likely triggers for a “Melt Down” or even, in extreme cases, suicide.
Just imagine the extent of the crisis for a severe O.C.G.D. sufferer who has thought of nothing for months but a proposed Garden Wedding…carefully timed to coincide with the flowering of the Wedding Day Roses & white Clematis.When, as can happen, there is a Tornado followed by torrential rain on the morning of the event. Imagine the despair. Unthinkable.

But you will hear nothing about this “Reality” during this Mental Health Week…Instead the media, with its usual demand for simplistic answers, will be promoting the idea that if you have a trowel in your hand & some carrot seeds in your pocket then all your problems are solved!

On a related but lighter note….I have a Bi-Polar mental illness & the garden is my life-boat…Tina handles the tiller…& the birds are my mentors.