Abundant splendour

All that creative and nurturing energy BAcC members usually lavish on their patients had to go somewhere during lockdown, and in many cases it was into the gardens, allotments and window boxes. The public's loss is nature's gain – and we thought we'd feature a few examples of acupuncturists turning their fingers green in celebration of all things growing and blooming.

Audley Burnett Member: Carmarthenshire

On this hillside in Wales, lockdown came on like the guillotine. I had not yet risen from winter’s watery depths – which I find particularly causatively hard – and the effects were rolled on by a trying, strike-beset train trip to Venice in January, and an unfulfilling and unproductive ‘sabbatical’ in February which I devoted to depressed sleep. I heard early on from our doctors and professors in Harbin, China (BAcC trip 2018) and closed my peculiar British practices in the first week of March. In retrospect I should have followed my intuitive fears earlier.

The silver lining was six months’ hyperactive and close attention to that which had received little care on our acres over the last 20 or so years.

These pictures are of the carefully hand-sieved compost made to restore some heart to the earth in our obligatory West Wales poly tunnel. They show riddled compost and compost with the addition of beehive cleanings of old wax and propolis. It was good enough to eat or scour faces with! Six months on I am still sailing into the unknown and No More Business as Usual but with soil in better productive condition. #ExtinctionRebellion In honour of National Allotment Week here is today's harvest. I was very lucky to get a quarter size plot in May last year and so this is my first full year growing from seed. I am amazed at how it has been feeding us. It really does taste so much more fresh. Today I've started giving it away to neighbours and friends too. Plus what a blessing to have had this special place of tranquillity this year. Still to come... sweetcorn and a few other new plantings I hope!

Hand-sieved compost Beveley de Valois BAcC Fellow: Middlesex

‘Pods’ is my 2020 allotment theme – from Basque teardrop peas from seed sourced by an ex-patient now retired in Spain to ‘pods’ of visiting friends. My allotment of 13 years fulfils many roles – it’s my larder, gym, florist, creative space, source of inspiration, and more. Invaluable for getting out during lockdown, my get-away-fromit-all space has ironically become a place for meetings and celebrations – in socially distanced pods, of course. Friends come to spend time in its ‘magic’ ‘healing’ space. Conditor horti felicitatis auctor: they who plant a garden plant happiness. 2020 has

Lisa Collins Member: Shropshire

proved the truth of this for me.

Allotment harvest!

Lori-Lee Hillman Overseas Member: Gibraltar

Shinrin yoku literally means forest bathing in Japan, where walking among trees is considered ideal for inner reflection and connecting with nature. The Japanese government even incorporated shinrin yoku into the country’s healthcare, as studies showed that it can reduce blood pressure and cortisol levels as well as stimulate memory and concentration.

Phytoncides are produced and released by trees as we walk, sit with and touch them – these chemicals have an immune boosting effect. As Dr Qing Li of the Society for Forest Medicine in Japan and author of The Art and Science of Forest Bathing says, ‘we are designed to be connected to the natural world, to listen to the wind and taste the air’.

There are shinrin yoku ‘clinic retreats’ in Japan, where you can stay, be assessed by a doctor and prescribed forest bathing and sensory exercises. An excellent idea for entrepreneurial acupuncturists to set up such a health centre in the UK – and not a bad work environment. My own experience of taking my meditation students to the ancient forests below the mountains of Ronda – looking at the patterns of the sun through the branches, listening to the breeze rustling the leaves, the aromas of oils released by the heat of the sun, the crackle of leaves beneath the feet – is that nature is the master healer.

My ‘front garden’ and place of inspiration overlooks the Atlantic to Morocco. Over the years we have fought to protect these dunes – they have indigenous species of dung beetle studied by the universities of London, Cardiff and Southampton, as well as the ‘sea daffodil’, a delicate white flower growing amongst the dunes.

The daffodils come with a warning not to take them into your house as they are hallucinogenic! Thankfully we now have wooden walkways down to the beach and the flora and beetles are safe from the 4x4s that used to drive across the beach.

In spring the ‘chorlitos’ or sandpipers lay their eggs in the dunes – they are very vulnerable to being stepped on. If you want to experience the five elements in all your being, this is the place to come to!

My patio herb and salad garden. Having bought organic soil to get started, we began composting and now have rich fertile soil abundant in worms, mycorrhiza and invertebrates who are all busy gardeners – even in this 40 degree heat!

When we eat something that we have grown ourselves, we are aware of the life of this food entering our body, like we are receiving a very honoured guest – it is life that is entering us, this honoured guest has come to give us life. If we look at life through our relationship to food our attitude toward nature can change. I feel privileged to have a garden of any size – it gives me the opportunity to make ‘contact’ with nature by growing some of my food, preparing food for myself and others, and the eating of food consciously. The lockdown has given me the time to cultivate my own ‘inner’ garden alongside my patio garden.

Tomatoes! Olga Fedina Overseas Member: Valencia

I love hibiscus plants! And they keep flowering all through the summer.

They are quite Hibiscus demanding though, requiring just the right amount of water and organic fertiliser almost every day.

I've had this lemon tree on my terrace for four years now, and the only time I was able to collect any harvest was the first year, when it produced three lemons. Since then, whatever I tried to do – prune it or leave it alone, fertilise it with special very smelly organic Lemon! fertiliser for citric trees etc – all the flowers would just fall off. Now during the lockdown I suddenly saw three lemons growing. This is the biggest one.

On the very first day of the lockdown here in Spain I got out on the terrace determined to finally put some order to the plants I've been growing there.

Some of them were looking like they could do with more attention. Even my

Viburnum tinus – called durillo or ‘hardy’ in

Spanish – looked a bit sad, asking desperately to be repotted in a bigger pot.

Here it is two months later, much happier.

With hibiscus popping up Viburnum from behind.