I am the founder and CEO of the Defence Gardens Scheme.

In 2019, the Defence Select Committee identified a stark gap in the provision of mental health care for military personnel and their families (House of Commons, 2019). This deficiency coincides with a rise in demand for services as, since 2008, the proportion of serving armed forces personnel with mental health conditions has risen to 6% of the serving and former serving population and in the population of veterans who have experienced combat, to 17.1% (Murphy and Busuttil, 2018).

Throughout my Churchill Fellowship (the USA and Scandinavia), I visited community gardening projects focused on improving veterans' mental health. I found that loss of identity on transition is a more widespread cause of mental health issues than post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and that there is a significant gap in non-clinical service provision.

My military experience in personnel and welfare, when combined with the research, motivated to me to try and help fill the gap. The Defence Gardens Scheme, based on a regional hub-and-spoke garden operating model, increases access to nature-based therapy for the military community.