The Well-Gardened Mind and the Wild Art of Inclusive Leadership
- Georgina Brown (hershe)
- Jul 14
- 3 min read
There are books that inform.
Books that soothe.
And then there’s The Well-Gardened Mind by Dr. Sue Stuart-Smith, a book that gets its muddy hands right into your soul and starts quietly composting the way you think about… thinking.
On the surface, it’s about gardening and mental health. But beneath the well-raked prose lies a powerful insight:
Healing, growth, and belonging don’t happen in spreadsheets. They happen in soil. In time. In rhythm. And in relationship.
And if that doesn’t scream inclusive leadership, we don’t know what does.
Neurodiversity, Neuroscience, and Nasturtiums
Sue Stuart-Smith is no sentimentalist. She’s a psychiatrist and psychotherapist who backs her writing with robust neuroscience. Drawing on everything from Viktor Frankl to horticultural therapy in prisons, she shows us how the act of tending to living things reorganises our internal world.
She describes how gardening promotes neuroplasticity, helping the brain form new connections and reduce stress — and how it restores agency in people who’ve experienced trauma, marginalisation, or loss.
Sound familiar?
It should. Because this is the foundation of BARDO’s NeuroInclusive Maturity Model (NIMM).
At its core, The Well-Gardened Mind makes the case for conscious growth, the very same thing NIMM is designed to nurture in organisations.
NIMM Meets Nature
Let’s plant some seeds between Sue Stuart-Smith’s work and the five domains of NIMM. NIMM might technically stand for NeuroInclusive Maturity Model, but, almost by design, it also captures the essence of its five core themes.
1. Neuro (Mind)
Gardening gets the prefrontal cortex back online. Repetitive, sensory-rich activities (digging, sowing, watering) calm the amygdala and activate executive function.
Stuart-Smith notes that tending plants restores attention, the very thing that bias and burnout deplete.
👉 NIMM Link: Inclusive leaders need neuro-literacy. Gardening is a physical metaphor for pausing, noticing, and tending your mental garden. It’s “Pause & Pivot” in action.
2. Identity (Self)
Gardens don’t care about your job title. In soil, we are all equal. Stuart-Smith talks about how gardening rebuilds fractured identities, especially for those excluded from mainstream systems (refugees, inmates, people with mental health struggles).
👉 NIMM Link: Inclusive systems must make space for authenticity, dignity, and visibility. The garden, like inclusion, is where we get to be messy and still matter.
3. Meaning (Culture)
A neglected space becomes a tended one. A monoculture becomes diverse. That’s culture change. The book shows how collective gardening projects transform institutional settings, hospitals, care homes, schools, from sterile to relational.
👉 NIMM Link: Organisational culture isn’t built in values statements, it’s grown through daily, deliberate care. Just like a garden, culture needs watering.
4. Mutuality (Relationships)
Stuart-Smith writes of gardening as a dialogue: between the gardener and the garden, between people working side-by-side. There’s a profound non-verbal intimacy in growing things together.
👉 NIMM Link: Mutuality thrives in environments of co-regulation and shared effort. Inclusion isn’t top-down. It’s composted in the everyday.
5. Momentum (Structures & Systems)
A garden without structure is chaos. But a garden without wildness is sterile. Stuart-Smith shows us the power of rhythm, planning, and long-term stewardship.
👉 NIMM Link: Momentum is about tending to systems, reviewing, pruning, adapting. Inclusive leadership means knowing when to nurture and when to dig up old roots.
Cultivating the Inclusive Leader’s Mind
Reading The Well-Gardened Mind is like sitting in a sun-warmed greenhouse with a wise friend who happens to be a psychiatrist. It’s gentle but piercing. And it reminds us that restoration is relational, between people, plants, and place.
Inclusion isn’t fast.
It isn’t flashy.
It’s something you grow.
You prepare the ground.
You clear the brambles.
You plant, tend, wait, adjust, and plant again.
This book isn’t “just” about gardening.It’s a call to lead differently.
To grow inner spaciousness so we can create outer belonging.
Final Thought
If you’re leading EDI, culture, or change, read this book. And then go outside.
Touch the soil.
Notice what’s thriving.
Notice what’s withered.
And ask yourself:
“What does this garden need from me today?”
Because leadership, real, inclusive, conscious leadership, is just another word for stewardship.
Curious? Find out more about NIMM.
P.S. I breed UK butterflies. I also breed ideas. And I can confirm, the messy bit before the reveal? That’s where the magic is.
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