Kathy Slack: How Gardening Boosts Wellbeing

Kathy Slack on gardening and wellbeing

Kathy Slack once worked as a high-flying advertising executive, living a jet-set life. However, by her mid-30s she was suffering from burnout, anxiety and overwhelming depression.

She and her husband relocated from London to the Cotswolds in pursuit of a healthier work-life balance. Instead, the move merely left her facing a much longer commute.

After leaving her job, she spent a considerable period unable to get out of bed, until her mother eventually persuaded her to go outdoors.

“My wonderful mum coaxed me outside one day and sat me with a cup of tea among these overgrown veg beds. If Miss Havisham had a veg patch, that’s what it would have looked like.

“And I looked at the weeds and the worms and watched the bugs tootling around and it kind of calmed me down. It wasn’t a huge moment where I went, ‘My God! Nature! I’m cured!’ but it made me feel slightly less awful.”

Her mother then gave her seeds to scatter. A few weeks afterwards, radishes emerged, followed by lettuces.

“Something about that transformation of a seed from nothing into something I could eat – and I’ve always been interested in food and cooking – just got me hooked.”

In Rough Patch, the book in which Slack recounts her path from depression to finding comfort through gardening, she describes leaving advertising to become a fruit picker for an organic farm business. She later moved into cooking, teaching and writing.

This was more than 10 years ago, before the relationship between gardens and wellbeing received such widespread attention. Now 47, Slack spends every spare moment she can in the garden and believes gardening saved her.

“I know it would be glib and a massive oversimplification say, ‘Oh, vegetables saved my life’, but they really were significant.

“When I got into nature, and particularly into growing vegetables, I realised what my values were, which I think is an exercise in knowing yourself a bit better anyway, I found it very creative and I found it very calming.

“It was real life, not the kind of fiction that I’ve been living in ‘Ad land’ before. This was what was real, right, what I needed and where my life should be.”

She now has roughly 20 metres of growing space across three raised beds, as well as an allotment. At times, neighbouring ‘hobby farmers’ also allow her to cultivate vegetables on unused areas of their land.

Five spring gardening tasks for wellbeing

“For me, spring is my New Year, not January. This is when I want my plan for what I’m doing for the year.”

Slack suggests five jobs for spring that she feels may support wellbeing.

1. Sow seeds

“Sow something. My top ones for March, particularly in window boxes and pots and sheltered spots, are radishes and peas.

“Radishes are my gateway vegetable to getting people into growing because they grow so quickly that you get almost instant gratification. They’re so easy and they look amazing in that gloom of February.

“I would definitely get peas in the soil as well, because they’re quite hardy and even if you don’t grow them to pea size, they’re great for pea shoots, and you can cut and come again two or three times, and then let them grow on to be full-size peas.

“This is all just a way of feeling that sense of wonder and awe at watching something as tiny as a radish seed turn into a golf ball-sized ruby that you can eat.”

2. Get your hands dirty

“God, I love compost!” Slack enthuses. “If you have a compost bin turn it and spring is a great time to spread it over your vegetable beds. Even if you don’t have your own compost bin, get some in, like council waste compost.

“It used to be kitchen scraps and is now this incredible chocolate, loamy, nutrient-rich magic. Spread it over your veg beds or dress the the top of your pots or spread it over your flower beds, but get your hands into that compost.”

She notes that research has found that touching soil with bare hands alone can alter the chemicals released by the brain and lift your mood.

Contact with healthy soil allows the absorption of a bacterium called Mycobacterium vaccae, which triggers the release of serotonin, often called the ‘happy hormone’.

3. Plan your growing year

“That might mean gathering some seed catalogues and having a browse. It has to be physical, not online. That doesn’t work for me,” she says. “I like to browse and turn pages and dream about how many different types of pumpkin I can grow this year and feel inspired and look forward to it. I feel that’s a real act of hope and will get you excited.”

4. Get physical

She advises getting outdoors to tackle physical gardening jobs, which can raise endorphins and support wellbeing.

“I do a lot of wheelbarrowing of compost,” Slack says. “I’m not a digger – I’m a ‘no-dig’ person – but I also think that just to potter around, going out with a bucket and pulling a few weeds up, can be very therapeutic.”

5. Grow windowsill herbs from seed

“Herbs are great to grow if you don’t have a garden because you can put them on everything you cook and suddenly there’s a little bit of your achievement – even if you put your homegrown basil on a microwave pizza,” says Slack.

“Now it’s not a ready meal, it’s a little bit of nature that you’ve tended and created and fed yourself with – and that is uplifting.”