Lisa Cunningham had been trapped in her home for seven years.
Depression and anxiety had wrapped themselves around her life so tightly that even opening the door to step outside felt impossible.
Her world had shrunk to the size of her pain, and nothing she’d tried—medication, therapy—seemed to loosen its grip.
Then, one day, something different happened.
She visited a medical center in East London, where Dr. Sam Everington offered her an unfamiliar kind of prescription.
He didn’t just hand her a refill for her antidepressants.
Instead, he handed her an invitation.
“Come twice a week,” he said, “and meet with a group of others going through what you’re going through.
Not to talk about how bad it feels, but to figure out something meaningful you can do together.”
Lisa didn’t want to go.
The thought of walking into a room full of strangers terrified her.
But something—maybe desperation, maybe the tiniest glimmer of hope—made her show up anyway.
On the first day, her fear overwhelmed her so completely that she vomited.
It could have been the end of the story right there. But it wasn’t.
The group gathered around her, rubbing her back, offering her comfort. They didn’t judge. They simply stayed.
The group didn’t start with answers.
They didn’t know what they were supposed to do, only that they needed to do something.
Then someone suggested a garden.
Behind the doctor’s office was a patch of scrubland—ugly, neglected, forgotten.
“Why don’t we turn it into a garden?” someone said.
None of them knew how to garden.
They were city people, like Lisa, who’d never planted a thing.
But they decided to learn.
They borrowed books from the library, watched YouTube videos, got their hands dirty in the soil.
Over time, something began to happen—not just to the land but to the people working it.
Lisa started showing up regularly.
She started to laugh. She started to care.
And when someone else didn’t show up, Lisa was the one who called to check in. “Are you okay?” she’d ask.
The garden transformed.
Weeds made way for flowers.
Dead patches gave way to green.
And as the garden bloomed, so did Lisa. “As the garden began to bloom,” she later said, “we began to bloom.”
Lisa and her group weren’t just creating a space filled with plants. They were building something even more vital—a community.
They became a tribe, watching out for one another, celebrating the small victories, and creating meaning in a place where there had been none.
By the end of it, Lisa wasn’t the same woman who had walked into that room for the first time, trembling and sick with anxiety.
She was someone who had found her way back to herself through connection, purpose, and the healing rhythm of nature.
This wasn’t a miracle. It was something real, something achievable, something replicable.
Dr. Everington called it social prescribing, and it’s spreading across Europe.
It’s not about replacing medication, but about addressing the deeper causes of depression—loneliness, isolation, the lack of a shared purpose.
Lisa’s story reminds us of something fundamental.
Healing doesn’t always come in a pill bottle.
Sometimes, it’s in the hands that rub your back when you’re afraid.
It’s in the soil under your nails and the flowers that push through the dirt.
It’s in the people who remind you that you’re not alone.
The garden they built was more than a garden. It was proof that even after years of pain, life can grow again.
This post was inspired by Johann Hari's Ted Talk, This could be why you are depressed.
