PEOPLE AND COMMUNITY
On Gardening as Therapy with
Jessica Stokes 1.You are a gardener and floral designer. What experiences led you into this work and what significance does this work hold for you?
My work is my lifestyle. I don't feel a great need to separate the two. Nature, Horticulture and flowers are 3 great loves of mine. They are my work, but they are also very much part of my "down-time". I use nature as a source of inspiration, but also to de compress. I enjoy arranging flowers for business, but also at home in my own garden. It is this close connection I have with Nature that aids me both in my work and in my life style. Always observing, learning and watching. You have to have a great passion for this career, its not just a day job. It all began when we lived in a tiny flat in the centre of Bath. We had no garden, and I had applied for an allotment. We waited a year or so (which isn't long). We knew we wanted to grow our own food, but I had never realised it would pull me towards growing flowers, working with flowers and then taking courses in Horticulture. I became completely besotted with it. My now husband and I would spend all our spare time there. Mornings before work, long evenings there after work, watering, weeding, picking and cooking our glut. We both felt a draw to it. I one day woke up and realised I didn't want to work in retail anymore, I wanted to be outside.
2. Cultivating a garden can have a significant impact on our health and wellbeing. It develops our relationship to our environment, fostering a sense of place and has a wider impact on our communities. Thus in many ways your work is centred around wellbeing. Does this impact upon your work at all and do you have views/ thoughts on what you see the role of a garden and floristry to play in our health/ communities?
I often say to people my work is my "therapy". It gives me head space, it means I am so connected with the seasons. I notice every small change before anyone else does. To the birds behaviours, to the way the leaves colour and change, to flowering patterns, watching the flowers turn to fruit, then to seed. I feel my body is so in sync with the natural world around me. It has really changed me. Working with your hands, feeling the natural rhythms around you does impact you, positively. I think not enough people have the opportunity to get outside, into peaceful green, wild spaces. If you live in a city this is hard and if you do not drive or own a car it is even harder.
There should be easier access for all people to get out into nature. We live very fast paced lives where everything is manifested and is here and now and quick, but really we need to slow down and feel the calming rythms of the natural world.
3. What are your aspirations/dreams/ desires for your personal and/or professional growth?
I have started to write in the last few years. It started as my "monthly story" which would go out to anyone signed up to it in my social media following. It was a way of journalling the seasons, the monthly happenings in the garden for people to read about, maybe learn something from. It was also an honest way of journalling my feelings and thoughts. I suffer with depression and anxiety. And I wanted to speak truthfully about my challenges, and how they are usually resolved through my work in Gardening and Floristry.
I then started writing freelance for a number of magazines. I love writing in various forms and find it very fulfilling. I only choose work which sustains me fully, not just financially. I have always been a believer of that.
But to answer your question, I would love to write more. My dream is to write a book, but in the meantime if I could write regularly and more articles I would love that. I think people enjoy reading about the natural world and feel a pull to it. It gives escapism for those seeking it.
4. What does wellbeing mean to you?
It is giving yourself time and space, time to decompress, time to care for yourself and be kind to yourself. I always make time for walks, leaving my phone behind and at home, I find an hour of just walking, looking around, observing, perhaps going over a few things in my mind, with interludes of brief moments of either stopping to look at a tree or to listen to the sound of a bird or to say hello to a neighbour. It really helps me re set and focus.
I will never deprive myself of this time, as it is so important to me, it is essential just as much as eating or drinking is to our health.
5.What are your interests, passions, where do you find inspiration?
I love going to the Sea, I find myself in my spare time either in Dorset or Cornwall. I am so grateful for living in the Southwest, as you are a short drive away from the coast. I enjoy beach combing, fossil hunting, walking coastal paths or simply taking a book in earshot and sight of the waves. I find the sea very very soothing. I create mosaic pieces with the pieces of sea pottery I find or with the shells I gather.
I also very much enjoy photography. I always have done, but recently I am taking lots of film photography. In a fast paced, "I-phone world" I love the unpredictability and slow pace there is to using film.
6. Do you have any practices, people, approaches that support you in your daily life?
I have regular talking therapy. This has dramatically improved my mental health, and allowed me to give myself an hour a week to talk to someone objective about the good and the bad, life's stresses and strains and moments of joy. I would urge anyone to do it. It is so good for your wellbeing and health overall.
7. What challenges have you faced in your life or in your current daily life and how have you overcome these?
Honestly, no one wants to talk about money, and although Ben and I feel very privileged in our lives, we don't have great family money and we do struggle. Especially when I wanted to change my career, it was SO hard! The only way to break into the industry of Horticulture or Floristry was to offer my time for free. But I had bills to pay and a full time job to attend. I ended up doing all my work experience and interning and education in my evenings or during my days off or "holiday". This was an exhausting 3 year-long, slog. But I got there eventually.
I also suffer with a chronic illness which means I get fatigued, and have a very low immune system and this doesn't go hand in hand with being self-employed. So I have to be very engaged with taking natural supplements and vitamins and caring for myself to prevent illness.
8. What triumphs have you had in life, or encounter in everyday life- how do you celebrate these?
Every time I complete a particularly wonderful job, or project I tend to document them on my Instagram. I love telling stories, through words and photography. I use both of these to journal happy moments or moments to celebrate or remember. I enjoy the Instagram community and sharing in these moments with others.
9. Where do you find joy/ comfort?
In my dog. Kipper is our first dog together as a couple but he has changed our lives completely . He has aided with my mental health hugely. He gets my husband and I outside in all weathers, and all moods. He is my working companion, and my lap warmer in bed, my shadow, and I couldn't be without him.
10. Do you have any principles or philosophies that guide you in your decision making and actions?
I believe everything happens for a reason. My life hasn't been easy, and forging this career for myself was very difficult. I faced a lot of rejection and I just had to have persistence and believe that "if it is for me, it won't pass me by". I live by this and it guides me when life doesn't go to plan.
11. What does daily life look like for you?
Daily life is walking my young Terrier Kipper, taking him to work with me, drinking good coffee (my husband is a coffee roaster), either gardening or flower arranging for various customers, then coming home and going for a long walk in the evening with Kipper and Ben. My weekends are usually spent at the local farmers market, if not by the sea out walking and finding a good old pub to drink a half Guinness in. Or sending time with family. I am the eldest of 5, and my siblings are my best friends.
12. Do you have anything else you would like to comment, is there any close to your heart or feelings central to you as women/ person/ or in your profession that you would like to share or be asked about?
I would like to say that the most important value in my work is sustainability. The floristry world/ industry is scarily wasteful. I have learnt this through working in very unsustainable environments, and seeing waste and the use of plastic in droves.
I have promised myself and my customers that if they use me, that I will strive to work seasonally and sustainably. Which is not always easy, but I would rather turn a job away than take on something which does not fulfil my soul.
We have to change people's perceptions of flowers, they are not cheap they have worth, they shouldn't last forever, they can be wonky or unusual in appearance, you cannot have Roses in February. We need to work in harmony with nature, not against it. Imagine a world that did that!
Find Jessica on social media here: https://www.instagram.com/_flowerandland/
28 Aug 2023.
