Who we are.

With a background working in the NHS as a Speech and Language Therapist (and a degree in Psychology from Durham University) I worked with both children in schools and adults in community hospitals and stroke units. With my love of languages and cultures I then spent eight years in South East Asia doing community development, setting up nutrition and education programmes as well as a small craft business for women.

Returning home in 2003 due to burn out and suffering with my mental health I found nature and gardening so healing and therapeutic. I retrained in horticulture and garden design and after running my own business for a few years trained in Horticultural Therapy as I wanted to share my passion for the healing benefits of plants and nature with others.

I worked for 10 years both as a tutor for AGE UK and as a freelance Horticultural Therapist with Activity and Wellbeing Coordinators in care homes and day centres in the Derbyshire and Sheffield area setting up gardening groups and intergenerational gardening projects with local schools. It was so rewarding seeing the therapeutic effect of plants and nature on the residents and staff and see the outside spaces transformed.

Since the pandemic, being unable to go into care homes and suffering from Long Covid since March 2020, nature again became my strength and healing as I connected with nature in a deeper way … noticing every weed and wildflower on my daily short stroll. I studied many online nature courses including foraging, tree identification, the secret life of trees and began leading nature connection zoom sessions and walks with AGE UK and local charities. I also created nature packs ( including seed sowing activities, poetry and mindfulness activities) that were distributed through AGE UK to socially isolated people.

In September 2021 I trained to become an Integrative Forest Therapy Practitioner with Nadur Centre for Integrative Forest Therapy and am now offering Forest Bathing/Forest Therapy and Wellbeing Stress Management sessions for organisations. I am currently working with Dr Kirsten McEwen and the team at Derby University researching the benefits of forest bathing with people with Long Covid.