Thursday, May 27, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Horticulture Therapy Programs at Innisfree FarmSummer 2010
What is Horticulture Therapy (HT)?
HT is a client-centred practice designed to connect people with gardening, plants and the natural world in a way that meets their needs and interests. HT gardens, tools and activities are often physically accessible.
Why Horticulture Therapy?
HT goals support physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social,
and vocational well-being in a safe and healthy environment. HT facilitators are trained in working with individuals who face barriers in society, or who have special needs.
Who can benefit from Horticulture Therapy?
Anyone! Specifically, HT programs in Canada and worldwide include seniors, people with physical challenges, people living with mental health or addiction issues, at-risk youth, people with developmental disabilities, women in transition.
For more information contact Lisa: (250)872-4252
universalgardens@live.com
Gardens Without Borders is a registered not-for-profit
Visit www.gardenswithoutborders.org
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
What is Horticulture Therapy? Definitions
Definitions
“The use of plants, gardens, and the natural landscape to improve cognitive, physical, social, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing.”
Canadian Horticulture Therapy Association, 2010
“Horticultural Therapy is a process through which plants, gardening activities, and the innate closeness we all feel toward Nature are used as vehicles in professionally conducted programs of therapy, and rehabilitation.”
S. Davis 'Horticultural Therapy – Principles and Practice'
“Horticulture Therapy is a professionally conducted client-centred treatment modality that utilizes horticulture activities to meet specific therapeutic or rehabilitative goals of its participants. The focus is to maximize social, cognitive, physical and/or psychological functioning and/or to enhance general health and wellness.”
R. Haller and C. Kramer 'Horticulture Therapy Methods'
“Horticulture Therapy, to me, uses plants, the garden, and the natural world around us to develop programs that are accessible, client-centred and non-directive in their approach. The programs are client-centred in the way that the activities and goals of Horticulture Therapy reflect the needs and goals chosen by the individual. The programs are non-directive in the way that myself, as the facilitator, does not attempt to steer the clients to any sort of rehabilitative solution; the clients themselves hold the key to their own healing. The plants are the catalyst by which healing happens My role is to develop creative and engaging activities that reflect the needs expressed by the client, and to share my experience in horticulture and support work in a way that is meaningful to the client.”
Lisa Hamilton, Certified HorticultureTherapist
Of People and Plants by Chanchal Cabrera
Since time immemorial herbs and plants have been assigned magical and mystical properties and have offered balm to those who were suffering. Their chemical properties have been applied as medicines and still form the basis of modern pharmaceutical science. Their energetic properties are applied for psychic or soul healing.
There is an instinctive attraction of people to plants – whether a bouquet of flowers, a lovely park, a path through the woods or our own gardens – and this attraction is the basis for the practice of horticulture therapy. We are drawn to plants; we feel better when we have exposure to plants; we use plants to mark all the important occasions through our lives. Births and deaths, weddings and anniversaries have been marked with flowers for thousands of years, as witness the ancient Persian burial chambers with many seeds and plant remains. Kings and Queens since the ancient Egyptians have been anointed on ascending to the throne. Even Elizabeth II was ritualistically anointed with neroli, rose, cinnamon, jasmine, benzoin, musk, civet and ambergris in sesame oil on her coronation as have all English monarchs for hundreds of years. The Victorians created a whole language of flowers whereby the contents of a bouquet or corsage could display ones intent towards a sweetheart or a suitor. Today we give roses to our lovers, we put flowers on a grave and we take plants to people in hospital. Plants and people have evolved over the millennia, side by side, sharing air and water and even sharing DNA.
Medicine men, shamans and elders in (so-called) primitive cultures around world, when asked how the first people knew which plants to pick, consistently answer that the plants told them so. Their relationship to the plant world is so intimate that they can hear what the plants have to say about their uses and dangers. Ancient Egyptians wrapped their mummies in cloths soaked in oil of Myrrh and Frankincense. This would not only preserve their bodies very well, but it was believed to ease their ascent to the higher plains of existence. Ancient Celts named the letters of the alphabet after trees so that reciting the alphabet meant listing birch, rowan, alder and willow. Some Celtic tribes also gave tree names to the months or seasons, pointing to a deep symbiotic inter-relationship with Nature and their landscape.
For most of us today, surrounded by development and a man-made landscape, Nature is something we glimpse through the car windows as we crawl along in rush hour traffic, or maybe if we are lucky it is a park where we can spend our lunch hour in the summer. We may try to get to the beach on the weekend but for the most part we are cut off, alienated and isolated from Nature. Horticulture Therapy presents an opportunity for individuals and communities to overcome this tragic loss. Everyone can participate, regardless of mental or physical ability, anything from digging new vegetable beds to sitting in the sun enjoying the flowers.
Horticulture Therapy provides an opportunity to reconnect soul and soil.