The Psychology Of Gardening

Why do so many people love gardening? What does your garden say about you? What is guerrilla gardening? The Psychology of Gardening delves into the huge benefits that gardening can have on our health and emotional well-being, and how this could impact on the entire public health of a country. It also explores what our gardens can tell us about our personalities, how we can link gardening to mindfulness and restoration, and what motivates someone to become a professional gardener. With gardening being an ever popular pastime, The Psychology of Gardening provides a fascinating insight into our relationships with our gardens.

Why do so many people love gardening? What does your garden say about you? What is guerrilla gardening? The Psychology of Gardening delves into the huge benefits that gardening can have on our health and emotional well-being, and how this could impact on the entire public health of a country. It also explores what our gardens can tell us about our personalities, how we can link gardening to mindfulness and restoration, and what motivates someone to become a professional gardener. With gardening being an ever popular pastime, The Psychology of Gardening provides a fascinating insight into our relationships with our gardens.

This insightful book explores the relationship we have with gardens and with the act of gardening, considering in detail the psychological, social and health benefits. From the Garden of Eden and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to Kew Gardens and the humble suburban plot, it is self-evident that gardens and gardening have an ever-present attraction. This book addresses the appeal of gardens from a psychological perspective: Why do we spend our cash on plants and gardening paraphernalia and give hours of our time to tending our annuals, bulbs and shrubs? Why do we travel to see gardens in our own and other countries? The theme of this book lies in identifying the individual and social rewards to be found in gardens and gardening, particularly within our own private gardens. The Psychological Appeal of Gardens will be of great interest to students and scholars of applied psychology, as well those taking horticultural courses of various levels, from professional horticulturalists to enthusiastic amateurs.

Ancient wisdom tells us that gardens have a healing, nourishing effect on the human soul and body. The garden belongs to the great archetype of life and is one of the few big archetypal images that are experienced primarily as positive. This positive experience is significant because the garden is a part of the natural and cultural human environment, and thus, is particularly influential in the interaction between human beings and their environment.

One of the world's leading child psychologists shatters the myth of "good parenting" Caring deeply about our children is part of what makes us human. Yet the thing we call "parenting" is a surprisingly new invention. In the past thirty years, the concept of parenting and the multibillion dollar industry surrounding it have transformed child care into obsessive, controlling, and goal-oriented labor intended to create a particular kind of child and therefore a particular kind of adult. In The Gardener and the Carpenter, the pioneering developmental psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik argues that the familiar twenty-first-century picture of parents and children is profoundly wrong--it's not just based on bad science, it's bad for kids and parents, too. Drawing on the study of human evolution and her own cutting-edge scientific research into how children learn, Gopnik shows that although caring for children is profoundly important, it is not a matter of shaping them to turn out a particular way. Children are designed to be messy and unpredictable, playful and imaginative, and to be very different both from their parents and from each other. The variability and flexibility of childhood lets them innovate, create, and survive in an unpredictable world. “Parenting" won't make children learn—but caring parents let children learn by creating a secure, loving environment.

Celebrate the tender story The Little Gardener with a beautiful new cover in the updated 2018 edition! There was once a little gardener and his garden meant everything to him. He worked hard, very hard, but he was just too little (or at least he felt he was). In this gentle, beautiful tale, Emily Hughes, the celebrated author of Wild, departs from the larger than life Wild-girl of her debut to pursue a littler than life Gardener, in a story that teaches us just how important it is to persist and try, no matter what the odds. With delicately woven tapestries of illustrated magic, Hughes once again transports us to a world not unlike our own, while still brimming with fantasy and wonder.

This is a new release of the original 1947 edition.