Regenerative Coaching, Facilitation & Consultancy
Life, Career, Well-being coach for individuals.
Culture, Leadership & Enterprise for teams
Meaningful, Reconnected, Resilient
Where The Mind Grows
What if a small change could change our world for the better?
Nature-led coaching, consultancy and facilitation
What if the small changes you make could, for your life, work, or business could add up to something bigger than you, for greater good?
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Where The Mind Grows offers nature-led coaching, consultancy and a place for community.
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Living in complex and uncertain times. Join me in the woods (or online) for a space of calm, reflection, insight and innovation.
If you’re looking to change something in life or career, feeling too busy in life and want to slow and simplify. Have faced adversity or loss that calls you to reassess your choices. Or are feeling a little hopeless and confused by our collective future and want to discover your way to make a difference. One-to-one coaching gives you space in the woods to get clear on what matters and how to move towards it.
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An approach where conversations about fear, uncertainty and anxiety can flow into hope, confidence, balance and the opportunity to make life a joyful place, even in challenging times.
If you work in or lead a team dealing with burnout, lost trust, or the pressure of climate and social uncertainty, my facilitation and consultancy helps you build a culture that is healthier, more adaptive and better equipped for change, learning from how living systems handle complexity.
And if you want time to connect more deeply with yourself, people who care about the same things, and a deeper connection with the natural world my retreats, wild workspaces co-working and gatherings offer real conversation, rest and a sense of belonging. With a focus on enhancing health for people and planet.
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Where the Mind Grows has been working for almost a decade to support people to grow awareness, hope, resilience and activate impact and action towards a brighter, healthier future now.
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We help individuals, teams, organisations and partnerships see how their choice to care for themselves and our planet, does have a difference. It does matter and it can be purposeful.
Helping busy people and cultures, change the way they do and be. With Nature as something we learn from not just in!
Welcome to Where the Mind Grows
I'm JK (Jennie-Kate McQuinn), a nature-led life and career coach, team facilitator, coach and consultant. And curator of wild and wonderful leadership programmes, based in North Yorkshire. I founded Where The Mind Grows to bring something that most coaching misses, the insight of the natural world itself and the benefits we receive for body and mind, when we have the space of Nature to grow, learn AND unlearn too.
I mainly work outside in private woodland near Ripon, venues across West and North Yorkshire, and sometimes -when needs must- online too, for those too far from the woods.
Alongside more commonly known coaching approaches I draw on 3.8 billion years of nature's mastery in complexity, change, depletion and renewal to help people and organisations find their way through.
It's not just about being in nature. It's about learning from it too.
Whether for your personal life and career choices, support and growth.
Or in the work I do with teams, organisations and leaders helping you create cultures that can contribute to a healthier, hopeful and resilient future.
Three ways in
Where The Mind Grows works across three interconnected areas. Each one is distinct, but all are rooted in the same belief. when people are genuinely well, connected and resourced, they do remarkable things; and live happier, healthier lives in the process.
Rooted Self
Life & Career Coaching one-to-one
One-to-one nature-based coaching for people navigating anxiety, stress or low mood. For adults at
career crossroads, struggling with confidence or identity, working through grief or loss, or simply
needing space to figure something out.
We work together from a private woodland near Ripon, through walk-and-talk sessions across
West and North Yorkshire, or online via Zoom. This is person-centred coaching that works with
your actual strengths and your particular way of being in the world, not a blueprint you have try to fit yourself into.
Nurtured Workplaces
Cultivating business cultures for a resilient and compassionate future.
For organisations that want to move beyond simply looking after their people, and start creating the conditions for individuals, teams and the wider organisation to genuinely thrive.
Whether you're an HR lead looking to strengthen staff wellbeing and development, a CEO rethinking how your organisation works, a leadership team navigating change and complexity, or an organisation ready to grow a more connected, resilient and regenerative culture, aware of the impact climate change could have on your organisation.
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Through staff coaching, team development, leadership programmes and regenerative organisational design, we help you nurture the conditions in which people and their work can flourish. Bringing together individual growth, collective intelligence and the design of healthier ways of working, all grounded in living systems thinking and inspired by nature. Shifting from paradigms of working that do not support our capacity to grow and thrive.
This is bold and beautiful work for pioneering and courageous organisations.
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The potential: Helping organisations to increase diversity, trust, innovation and resilience.
Developing new ways of working that have human and planet health in mind.
Future proofing your organisation and team for the unexpected and unknown changes of living in times of polycrises.
Enhancing communication, wellbeing, efficiency, impact and the confidence to manage change.
Gathering Community
Retreats, Events & Group Connection
In a world that can feel fleeting and disconnected, Gathering Community is Where The Mind
Grows' third area of focus. One we have learned, helps create a better connected future!
From retreats and events to wild co-working and seasonal gatherings. These offerings aim
to reduce isolation, deepen connection with the natural world, and create the kind of community
that makes a real difference to well-being.
Rooted in belonging, joyful human connection, and a healthy dose of the wild. For people who
want to grow alongside others, not just alone.
BOOK LAUNCH COMING SOON
A Version of Grief
As part of our offerings to grief and loss. My book on grief and nature comes out for National Grief Week (2-8th December 2026). You can attend the book launch on the 3rd December in Leeds or secure your pre-order book at the buttons below. And if you want to find out more about how we work with grief and loss. Visit our 'Where the Mind Grieves' page here
Some of the organisations we've worked alongside...
Some of the work we do together is of a sensitive or confidential nature. We only share our partnerships with the agreement of the organisations involved.
What Nature can actually teach us...
Beyond the science of being outside . What happens when you learn from nature, not just in it?
Healthy natural systems aren't built on extraction and exhaustion. They're built on diversity, reciprocity, rest, and cycles of growth and release.
Trees know when to shed, when to root deeper, when to reach and when to pause. Forests manage extraordinary complexity, resource-sharing, communication complexity, mutual support under stress, without a strategy document. Much of what leads people, teams and organisations to burn out or lose faith
is the opposite of those principles.
This approach is curated for sustainable change. Not just another wasted day or tick box well-being activity. Things go deeper here!
At Where The Mind Grows, coaching sessions and programmes draw on this intelligence deliberately. Being in nature optimises learning, thinking and the capacity for change. Cortisol - your stress hormone-drops, muscles relax, blood pressure falls. Focus and openness come more easily among birdsong and canopy of the trees.
Moments of awe — in wildflowers, fungi, the view or 'whats that' moments — create the neurological conditions for
problem-solving, creativity and real decision-making.
For individuals, this means a coaching space that works with your whole self . Mind, body and the environment around you. For teams and organisations, it means a framework for culture and leadership rooted in living systems thinking. Adaptive, regenerative, genuinely sustainable. Alongside you through change and complexity.
Gently, practically, and with a lot of curiosity; we explore what becomes possible when you start working with your true nature, rather than against it.
"My personal well-being has been hugely improved. I'm prioritising my own needs in all areas of my life. I feel more connected to nature and I've built daily habits that allow me to spend time outdoors and can see the impact on my well-being. " Bridget
"We couldn't have had these conversations indoors. Nature really helped."
— Kate, Citizens Advice
"Safe, welcoming space which has forced me to make time to address well-being for myself
and my organisation."
— Programme participant, third sector leader
Not sure where to begin?
For you — individual coaching
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Plenty of people arrive here with a general sense that something needs to change and not much more than that. That's enough. Here's how to take the next step, whatever your situation.
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Book a free 20-minute discovery call. We'll talk through where you are, what you're looking for, and whether we're a good fit. No expectation beyond a conversation and a chance to explore if we are a great fit for coaching (life or career) together.
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FOR ORGANISATIONS
For your team or organisation
Book a free 30-minute workplace consultation. We'll explore your team's situation, discuss the right approach, and map out what working together might look like. Completely confidential.
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Other ways to explore...
Browse at your own pace the blog, free resources, are a great place to start or join the weekly newsletter for free and receive some free welcome resources and a reflection and offering from me each week, to your inbox.