The Mindful Gardener

Sun 20 July 2025

This book & illustrated talk explores a year in the life of an Isle of Wight country garden, complete with resident and visiting characters. What is mindfulness? What makes gardening an ideal mindfulness activity? What are my favourite plants and why? How are flowers designed to support their favourite insects and how does climate change affect this. What can we do? How does this address the environmental issues besetting our wildlife as we reach global warming and encounter strange weather patterns? Can mindfulness enable us to cope with the challenges of weeds, and the crisis we all face? By exploring my own emotional responses to the challenges throughout the year, and the glorious celebrations of each season, I hope to present a gardening relationship that evokes positivity and happiness in the face of any challenges life may throw at us especially gardeners. Life can be interesting or overwhelming, with thousands of shades in between. How we understand ourselves and our relationships with our life is the key to enjoying and making the most of it. The author has been gardening since early childhood with her grandma, and has been teaching mindfulness and writing books for over thirty years. She is passionate about it all.