Natural Growth Project

The Natural Growth Project (NGP) is a pioneering initiative established by the Medical Foundation in 1992, combining horticulture and psychotherapy. It takes as its fundamental premise that everyone, everywhere, whatever their experiences, has a continuing relationship with nature.

The project is designed to address the challenges many torture survivors have in verbally communicating past experiences and present problems. For some of the most physically and mentally damaged clients, being in the open and in touch with the elements can bring instant relief, and open the path to extraordinary change.

The psychotherapeutic aim of the project is to facilitate growth and healthy development within the individual, allowing nature to do its work, while at times reflecting on clients' experiences.

Nature, with its cycles of growth and decay, provides a ready metaphor, access to the healthy part of our clients, restoring some balance to their lives and preventing a complete collapse into illness and despair. It allows a re-engagement with their pre-traumatic capacities. Nature itself becomes the means of communication, transcending widely diverse cultures and languages.

The project is currently staffed by two psychotherapists and a project worker, the latter dealing also with all aspects of horticulture. Some of the work takes place in a small, fenced-off garden section at the London centre, whilst the rest is located on allotments in Colindale and Ealing.

After an initial assessment for the project, clients are placed according to their needs in one of several options.

For extremely fragile clients, the enclosed garden provides a secure space for individual psychotherapeutic work. Using nature as a metaphor, it is possible very quickly to access deeply traumatic events. Here the work progresses gently, allowing nature to act as the container while clients explore their lives. In a small area some clients have planted memorials to loved ones they have lost, and they are comforted in being able to tend them regularly.

On the allotments, a weekly men's gardening group offers the opportunity of working together on outdoor horticultural activities in a befriending atmosphere. Another allotment group meets weekly on a communal plot, together with a psychotherapist and the project worker. While the clients engage with the planting and caring for crops, the conduct of the group draws on group analytic principles.

In winter, groups meet indoors, engaging in projects usually with a nature-related theme, such as producing mosaic paving stones destined for the garden, each representing an aspect of their experience.

In a third model, the psychotherapeutic and gardening team meets fortnightly with another group of clients, who hold their own keys and can visit the allotments whenever they wish. These individuals need a different kind of resilience; they are exposed to the vicissitudes of ordinary allotment life, including the possibility of free interaction with each other and with other allotment owners. They also take a different kind of responsibility for their own crops.

Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health article about the Natural Growth Project
For any further information email ccritchley@torturecare.org.uk 

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