BOOK OF THE WEEKTHE WELL-GARDENED MINDby Sue Stuart-Smith (William Collins £20, 352pp)Back in 1915 Alexander Douglas Gillespie, an officer with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, wrote a letter home from the battlefields of Northern France. His family were convinced that Ted’s long and healthy life was largely due to ‘the restorative effects of gardening and working the land’. As early as 1796, the physician William Tuke built an asylum near York where, instead of being restrained, patients were allowed to wander freely and given gardening work to do. THE WELL-GARDENED MIND by Sue Stuart-Smith (William Collins £20, 352pp)The Well-Gardened Mind elegantly weaves in case histories with snippets of memoir. As Sue Stuart-Smith wisely puts it, a garden ‘gives you quiet, so you can hear your own thoughts’.

Source: Daily Mail June 25, 2020 21:01 UTC