Grieving while growing: The Hampshire smallholding helping mourners process their loss

Carole Short and her husband Steve had been married for 52 years when he was diagnosed with bowel cancer. The pair had been together since they were 15 years old, had two children, and were enjoying a blissful retirement, taking holidays and trekking over England’s coast to coast route when Steve received the shock news. He died a few months later in April 2022.

The pair had discussed what Carole, a 76-year-old retired primary teacher, should do following Steve’s death and soon afterwards she decided to attend a local bereavement group to help process her grief. She grimly recalls entering a cavernous community hall with a gaggle of volunteers gathered around plastic tables in the middle and only Short and one other recently widowed woman in attendance. They were shown a pie chart detailing the various stages of grief and asked questions neither of them felt like answering.

“It was absolutely dreadful,” she says. “Both of us ended up in tears. I never went back.”

Today she is chatting in an entirely different setting. We are sitting together in the sunshine, drinking tea in an open air wood cabin situated in the middle of Four Acre Farm in Ringwood, Hampshire.

Volunteers are harvesting the market garden fields, collecting the bounty of the autumn harvest. Robins chit from the newly-planted hedgerows and the last drowsy butterflies and bees of the year drift over the flowerbeds. But death swirls around this bucolic scene. Indeed, it is why we are here.

Carole Short and a group of other recently bereaved people from the local area meet here once a fortnight as members of the farm’s dedicated bereavement support group, enjoying the open air regardless of the weather. In the depths of winter they wear wellies and warm winter coats. Occasionally they are tasked with sowing seeds, or constructing bird boxes or moth traps, but often they while away the hours simply chatting together and listening to the birds.

“When I started [at Four Acre Farm] I was so lacking in self-confidence but being here really does give you a boost,” Carole says. “It makes a massive difference actually, being in a beautiful place with people who understand and know how it feels.”

The group was started by Mollie Taylor, who in 2021 leased a four-acre strip of farmland with her step-sister Kate Forrester. Previously Mollie had worked at nearby nature reserve Hengistbury Head, where she first established the bereavement group, while Kate worked as a private chef in London, cooking for high-net worth clients and assorted celebrities.

Both had grown disillusioned with work and wanted to create their own site growing food and encouraging wildlife as well as a place where the community could congregate. When the land became available they decided to pour their life savings into the new enterprise.

Leased from a local cattle farmer for £1,000 a year, when they first arrived, the site was an expanse of maize stubble field doused in pesticide and artificial fertiliser. They have since set about restoring nature to the landscape, planting 5,000 trees including hedgerows and an orchard of local varieties of fruit. They have also established a thriving one-acre market garden utilising no-dig growing techniques which helps repair the soil and removes the need for any harmful chemical treatments. Currently, they now supply several nearby restaurants and farm shops, as well as running a successful vegetable box and cut flower delivery service to local residents.

The farm operates numerous workshops and events with the community – and has run several crowdfunders to raise money to expand including an ongoing appeal to raise £25,000 for a new irrigation system and green energy supply – but it is the nature-focused bereavement group which sits closest to founder Mollie’s heart.

She had the idea following the death of her beloved grandmother (also called Molly) while she was a university student in Manchester. Her death led to her experiencing surging anxiety which left her largely housebound. When she sought medical care, she was prescribed antidepressants which she says left her “shivering in bed”.

It was only when she spent time outside volunteering at Hengistbury Head that her spirits started to lift. “Within a week I felt so much lighter,” she says. “That made me wonder how I could help other people.”

Similar groups are now starting to spring up across the country as health chiefs look at novel ways to address Britain’s burgeoning mental health crisis (with social isolation among the elderly of particular concern). In 2021, the NHS launched a £5.77m green social prescribing programme to encourage nature-based interventions in mental health services, establishing seven test areas across the country. Since then, evidence has continued to build of the positive impact it has on patients and the subsequent reduced demand on the health and social care system.

Researchers at University College London have recently published a summary of 64 studies examining the relationship between the natural environment and health and wellbeing which found nature-based social prescribing interventions connect people to the wider community and “in turn foster feelings of social connectedness, connectedness to nature and decrease feelings of social isolation”. However there remains far greater scope for introduction across the NHS, particularly as mental health waiting lists continue to soar.

The bereavement group has been meeting at Four Acre Farm for a year now. Elaine Attfield, a 72-year-old from Wimbourne has been coming from the start after losing her husband, Jim, at the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown. The pair (who met working as stockbrokers in London) had been married for 47 years.

Jim was receiving leukemia treatment at Bournemouth Hospital when lockdown came into force and Elaine was no longer allowed to visit. He died in March 2020, and only six people could attend his funeral including Elaine, their two sons and partners.

“I was alone in lockdown and it was very hard,” she recalls. “I had phone calls from lots of people but it’s not the same as having a hug from someone.”

She says the success of the bereavement group is that it feels like meeting up with friends. While they openly discuss their grief, there is also more general chat encouraged by the beautiful setting. The day I visit they are each sent home with a handful of beans and courgettes. “We have a laugh and share all sorts of stories together,” she says. “It does lift me.”

Some attendees are signposted by local doctors, such as Derek Leech, a 77-year-old retired stockbroker who lives in a village outside the nearby town of Christchurch. In 2021, his wife Lorraine died and he suffered an emotional breakdown soon afterwards. The pair were married for 48 years and Derek says he still cannot bring himself to change anything in the house. “If she walked in now it would be exactly as she left it,” he says.

Like the other attendees at the group he says that grief comes in waves. He is maintaining the garden his wife adored and learning to cook with the use of a new air fryer. “Soldiering on”, is how he describes it best.

Coming to Four Acre Farm has “helped enormously” he says. Watching the seasons gradually pass in the company of others and knowing that you are not alone.