Historic English secret garden reveals wellbeing toolkit to encourage healing with nature

As evidence grows around nature’s wellbeing and health benefits, the team behind the UK’s Lost Gardens of Heligan has created an initiative to demonstrate how its guests can harness nature to boost wellbeing.

Heligan has partnered with Dr Lucy Loveday – regional director for The British Society of Lifestyle Medicine and associate research fellow at the University of Exeter – to launch a new Nature Wellbeing Toolkit inspired by the garden’s Spring highlights.

The sprawling Lost Gardens of Heligan are part of the historic Heligan estate in Cornwall, Southern England.

After most of its workforce was sent to war in 1914, the estate’s garden became vastly overgrown and nature ran wild for nearly 80 years. In 1990, the forgotten green sanctuary was rediscovered and became Europe’s largest garden restoration project.

Heligan and Loveday have produced educational material inspired by the vast secret garden that educates visitors about how nature can support wellbeing.

Together, they've created a free Spring Wellbeing Booklet ready for visitors in April and May, which explores scientifically-backed methods such as forest bathing, mindfulness, blue spaces, birdsong and the power of green exercise.

Loveday says she was inspired to create the initiative after so many people have discovered personal resilience through connection with nature. To her, our relationship with nature feels "more relevant than ever before".

“This experience will be personal, so we’ve deliberately curated an experience that offers people the opportunity to engage with nature in a variety of different ways,” Loveday explained.

“It’s essential we acknowledge, appreciate and deepen our understanding of the connection between human health and the health of the natural world. One cannot exist without the other.”