Harvesting Pine with Rory MacPhee in Lindores Forest

Just off Newburgh in Fife lies Lindores Forest, home, quite literally, to Rory MacPhee. A former marine lawyer who once worked among the yachts of Greek shipping billionaires, Rory chose a radically different life: now in his seventh year living off-grid in what he calls his “living forest,” he builds his own boats, has dug a sauna into the earth, teaches survival skills and wood carving, and tends what The Courier has described as the UK’s first curative forest. He runs his own nature-therapy practice, The Nature Therapy Counsel, and has talked about forest bathing and finding peace in his woodland on BBC Radio Scotland’s Scotland Outdoors.

Dr Minha is pictured with Rory harvesting pine cones to make tea, one of the forest’s many quiet gifts. Rory, a member of her IH3 network, turned 70 in 2026, and she marked the milestone in the Indian tradition of honouring an elder: with the gift of a pashmina shawl. It is a small moment that captures something she believes deeply, that healing is as much about connection, respect and place as it is about medicine.

And nature itself, she is convinced, belongs in the prescription. Scotland has become a leader in green health and nature-based prescribing, with a growing evidence base that time spent in natural settings can ease stress, lift mood and support recovery from chronic illness. For patients worn down by years of appointments and hospital corridors, a forest can be exactly the kind of place that does not feel like medicine, yet quietly heals.

Places like Rory’s forest, and people like Rory, are part of the wider healing ecosystem Dr Minha is building across Scotland, a network of foragers, herbalists, landowners and practitioners whose work she is determined to champion. It is the same vision that has her still searching for a farm or retreat of her own: somewhere, away from the clinical setting, where people can simply come to be well.