Tending the Inner and Outer Garden: Food, Soil, and Mental Wellbeing

Sat 7th November, 09 am - 11 am | $35 (+ booking fee. Price includes GST)

This session explores how growing, sourcing, and eating real, seasonal food supports mental health. Drawing on nutritional psychology, lifestyle medicine, and emerging microbiome research, we’ll reflect on how tending the soil and our food practices can gently support mood, connection, and overall wellbeing.

Key Takeaways:

• Food as relationship: How everyday food practices (growing, preparing, sharing) shape mood, connection, and wellbeing
• The gut–brain connection: Understanding how food quality and diversity & contact with soil may influence mental health through the microbiome
• Gardening for the Mind: How engaging with nature provides a practical tool for stress reduction and "rewilding" our health.

Kristy Howard is a Registered Psychologist based on the Sunshine Coast, integrating lifestyle medicine, nutritional psychology, and therapeutic horticulture into her work with women, particularly those in caring roles. She is the founder of In My Mother’s Kitchen and Mood Food Psychology, where she explores the relationship between food, nature, and mental wellbeing. Kristy is a Fellow of the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine and is currently undertaking a PhD at RMIT University, exploring how food sourcing environments and everyday food practices shape diet, the gut microbiome, and health. Her work invites a gentle “rewilding” of health through reconnecting with food, place, and self.

This session will take place at Green Thumb Farm: 2204 Mt Samson Rd, Samford Valley, QLD 4520