Still Places #7 : Gardens of Recovery
All Text & Images: Dom Galloway | GardenSpace (unless otherwise noted)
When life is fractured—by illness, by trauma, by loss—the road back to wholeness can feel long and uncertain. Recovery is often arduous; it rarely follows a straight path. It requires gentleness, patience, and environments that support healing not only of the body but also of the spirit. Across cultures and centuries, gardens have been places where renewal takes root, quietly and steadily, even when words or medicines cannot reach.
The healing garden is not a modern invention. In the cloisters of medieval monasteries, medicinal plants were grown for both the treatment of disease and the restoration of the soul. Monks understood that the setting mattered as much as the cure: to sit in the cloister garden, hearing water flow and watching herbs sway in the breeze, was to find calm amid suffering. In ancient Persia, the idea of the garden as paradise was itself entwined with healing: to walk among flowing water and ordered trees was to be reminded of balance, harmony, and the promise of restoration.
Horatio’s Garden – Midlands Oswestry, Image Source & Credit: Horatio’s Garden
The link between gardens and recovery is particularly striking in times of crisis. After the First World War, hospitals across Europe and America built gardens for returning soldiers. Many were broken in body, mind and spirit, carrying wounds visible and invisible. The gardens became spaces where they could walk without pressure, find calm without demand, and begin the long process of recovery at their own pace. In these quiet spaces, soldiers could reconnect with a world not defined by destruction but by renewal.
Modern research has affirmed what earlier cultures knew: that nature supports healing. Studies show that patients recover more quickly when they have views of trees or gardens from their hospital beds. Stress and anxiety decrease when people spend even short amounts of time in green spaces. Memory improves, heart rates settle, and pain is often eased. This is why hospitals, rehabilitation centres, and aged-care facilities are again reintroducing gardens into their designs. The garden is increasingly being seen not as a pleasant extra, but as an essential part of care.
The power of gardens in recovery lies in their gentle neutrality. Unlike clinical spaces, the garden does not demand performance or progress. It makes no judgment about one’s state. A person may sit in stillness, may walk slowly, may touch the leaves or simply watch sunlight shift across a flower bed. Each choice is valid, each moment restorative in its own right. For those recovering from trauma, this freedom is profound—it restores a sense of capacity, a reminder that healing moves at its own rhythm, not by external command.
For many individuals, private gardens have also become places of recovery. In grief, tending plants can be an anchor—small acts of watering, weeding, or planting seeds offering a structure when all else feels chaotic. For those struggling with depression, the sight of new shoots emerging from soil can be a quiet assurance that life continues, that renewal is possible. In the wake of illness, the gradual return of energy can be matched by the slow tending of a garden—strength rebuilt alongside soil.
“As humans we often feel helpless in our own smallness, but still we find the resilience to do and make beautiful things, and this is where the meaning of life resides.” - Nick Cave
Recovery is not only personal. Community gardens often serve as spaces where those marginalized, displaced, or struggling find belonging and support. Shared work with soil and plants allows people to connect without words, to contribute without explanation, to heal in the company of others. The garden becomes not only a place of individual renewal but also a ground of collective recovery.
Ultimately, gardens of recovery remind us that healing is not only about the cessation of pain, but about the renewing of life. A garden, with its cycles of growth, decay, and reemergence, is a parallel to the journey of the recovering self: fragile at first, resilient with time, ever-changing yet deeply rooted. To walk through such a space is to be reassured that recovery will come—and that patience, care, and time will bring life back again.
The garden’s gift is not to erase suffering, but to hold it within a larger story. In illness or trauma, it offers a landscape where one can glimpse hope, where beauty persists even in brokenness, and where the long work of recovery can unfold with gentleness and grace.
For more:
· Sue Stuart-Smith, ‘The Well Gardened Mind’ (https://www.suestuartsmith.com/book)
· Horatio’s Garden, (https://www.horatiosgarden.org.uk)
For help to develop your own garden of recovery, contact us today.