Running from the 3rd – 11th of May, 2025, the National Garden Scheme (NGS) Gardens and Health Week aims to demonstrate the importance of gardens for everyone’s health and wellbeing. This year’s Gardens and Health Week is accompanied by the fifth edition of the interactive, digital publication The Little Yellow Book of Gardens and Health which brings the programme to life. Along with personal stories and opinions from contributors including Dr Miriam Stoppard, Danny Clarke, Dame Laura Lee, Dr Susan Taheri, Hazel Gardiner and key nursing charities, the book explores the benefit of gardens and gardening for our own, and the planets, health.
NGS Chief Executive, George Plumptre said: “We began our Gardens and Health programme in 2016 with the publication of the report, Gardens and Health: implications for policy and practice, commissioned from the leading health policy organisation The King’s Fund. As part of our ongoing commitment, we continue to champion, and increase our funding for, garden projects in health-care settings, and community gardens; areas that we believe are vital lifelines not just for our own health and wellbeing but also for the wider health of the planet.
“This year our theme is ‘green medicine’ and through the various chapters the wonderfully varied and uplifting articles that they contain explore the different ways that gardens really can offer a viable and effective alternative to standard clinical responses to people’s health and wellbeing. In some instances, perhaps adults living with depression, lack of self-confidence or social isolation, or children with a troubled upbringing – all notoriously hard to overcome with a purely clinical response – gardens and gardening offer something unique which we still have fully to understand. The Little Yellow Book of Gardens and Health brings to life a range of experiences with incisive – and often uplifting – immediacy.”
The NGS has donated over £74 million to support nursing and health charities, including £3 million through its Gardens and Health Programme, in support of people and projects from community gardens and horticultural therapy to gardens at Maggie’s and Horatio’s Garden.
“The richness and diversity of storytelling in The Little Yellow Book of Gardens and Health perfectly reflects the incredible variety of gardens that open for the National Garden Scheme, while showcasing everything that makes gardens and green spaces so important for everyone’s health and wellbeing” said NGS Ambassador, gardener, television presenter and writer Rachel de Thame. She adds “Celebrating gardens is a celebration of life.”
