Tree of Assets

My fall season started while at the Ignatius Jesuit Centre of Guelph, first coordinating a five day horticultural therapy practical training, directly followed by the Canadian Horticultural Therapy Association conference and annual general meeting.  Magnificent golden days enriched this flurry of activity.

The Home Farm Horticultural Therapy Practical Training was hosted at the Julien Project, a charitable organization using social and therapeutic gardening on the Ignatius Jesuit Centre property.  Seven students, from different parts of Ontario and even an American visitor, came to the Project for an intense week of hands on learning.  The site was ideal in that it provided a  space to work directly with a diversity of populations in both a protected courtyard and field production plot in the community garden.  There were lots of opportunities for experimenting with various activities, including wreath making, vegetable harvesting and creating seed mosaics and then a chance to debrief as a group the experience.

We also had the chance to visit a range of exemplary sites,  from hospitals to farms, using  gardening and nature for health promotion.  The context and scale was always different but overall, students were most blown away by the passion of the individuals working at all these places.

For me personally, it was a joy to be able to share much of what I have acquired since I started on my own horticultural therapy journey and to introduce students to the Julien Project, a site where I have gained so much by volunteering with program delivery and now on the Board of Directors.  The Julien Project has a vision to be a national teaching site for therapeutic gardening and horticultural therapy and the education week launched that work.  It was also a great pleasure to work with Christine Pollard and Sharon Stewart, my teachers and mentors, to offer this program.  The generous spirits of the students who participated made this an invaluable experience for us all.  Thank you to all the risk takers…

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I also sit on the Board of the Canadian Horticultural Therapy Association and was excited that the location of this year’s conference would allow our members to experience the Ignatius Jesuit Centre and also be introduced more fully to the Julien Project.  It was great to see how many new people were in attendance wanting to learn about this field and get connected.  The Julien Project had a place to make a presentation at the conference about our process as a new organization building  towards becoming sustainable, fitting with this year’s larger environmental theme.  A reception held at the courtyard garden welcomed participants into this peaceful space.

On the Sunday, I made my own presentation about my area of passion and experience, children and youth and therapeutic horticulture.   I wanted to create an interactive environment to explore the current context around gardening for young people and the potential role of therapeutic horticulture in this work.  I believe their is a role to ensure that health promotion is more strongly incorporated and that the recognized health benefits move beyond the realm of obesity prevention.  It felt appropriate to be having a lively discussion in our own outdoor classroom.

*Photo credit: Margaret Nevett for CHTA presentation capture (above)

*An on-line add on to the Canadian Horticultural Therapy Association members’ newsletter.  You are invited to comment and share your favorite HT related books and research.

November/December 2009 Edition

Defiant Gardens:  Making Gardens in Wartime
Author: Kenneth I. Helphand
San Antonio: Trinity University Press (2006)

Fascinating online extension available at http://defiantgardens.com

“Would you be so kind as to send me some flower seeds?…I want to cover the unsightly earth with verdure (41).” –a WWI soldier’s special request in a letter home

An appropriate selection in the month of Remembrance Day, this historical record provides insight into the significant role of gardens in challenging times.  Helphand’s garden research, related specifically to war, focuses on the first half of the twentieth century.

Where do we see defiant gardens in our own communities at this time?  Why do these spaces often thrive against all odds?   What is the role of gardens in peace building and healing?

*An on-line add on to a new section of the Canadian Horticultural Therapy Association members’ newsletter.  You are invited to comment and share your favorite HT related books and research.

September/October 2009 Edition

Garden Your Way to Health and Fitness (2008)
Authors: Bunny Guinness & Jacqueline Knox
Is your garden work doing more harm to your body than good?  Are you modeling the safest techniques to your participants?
This unique book brings together the expert skills of a physiotherapist and garden designer to offer an approach to gardening that promotes good health.  Great ideas for using the garden as a site for regular exercise and how to look after yourself in the process of getting fit right in your backyard.

International Journal of Therapeutic Communities
Green Care Edition (2008)
Available free online.
Green Care uses a range of nature-based approaches to produce health, social or educational benefits.  These approaches included social and therapeutic horticulture, care farming, animal assisted interventions, green exercise, ecotherapy and wilderness/nature therapy.

This special edition of the journal provides a number of papers that draw parallels between green care and therapeutic communities.  Green care is a growing movement, especially in Europe, bringing a broad range of groups together to organize around research and practice.
How does this connect to what is happening in Canada?  What does it mean for the field of Horticultural Therapy?

At first everyone is a bit tentative about the technology but due to the ease of the set-up, quickly students are sold and we see true personalities being expressed online.  A true on-line learning community is established with a group of people who are interested in engaging on the same topic.  Thank you to all the first timers who took the risk to join us with this new venture.  We hope to see you in Module 2 (coming in April).  Thank you to Christine Pollard for providing another accessible horticultural therapy education platform and for allowing me to take part in the instruction and development of this exciting advancement for horticultural therapy in Canada and beyond.

*Be sure to check out the Home Farm Alumni News Blog, a place for horticultural therapy learners to contribute experiences.

We continue to work through the Natural Farming ideas of Masanobu Fukuoka and consider practical applications for this knowledge in an urban area like Toronto.

From Fukuoka’s book, The One-Straw Revolution, I was able to glean the following quotes which I found to be particularly meaningful for my studies in horticultural therapy:

“Ultimately it is not the growing technique which is the most important factor, but rather the state of mind of the farmer (46).”

“Food and medicine are not two different things:  they are the front and back of one body.  Chemically grown vegetables may be eaten for food, but they cannot be used as medicine (100).”

“If a sick person returns to a healthy environment often the disease will disappear (144).”

We have an “in the garden” session set-up for April and in the meantime an opportunity to consider how to unite the body, the heart and the mind through our garden practices.