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Rake Two Flower Beds and Call Me in the Morning
Plants & Gardens News | Volume 23, Number 1 | Spring 2008
by Ilene Sternberg
When shown yet another carload of plants you’ve schlepped home from the garden center, have caring friends intimated that perhaps it’s time you sought some therapy for your gardening obsession? Well, now you can tell them with confidence that your gardening obsession is therapy.
Plants are fundamental to life—both practically and symbolically—and flowers have served as universal symbols of beauty, vitality, love, hope, gratitude, and joy. Humans have an innate attraction to nature, and, perhaps due to our primal origins, whether Edenic or Darwinian, being outdoors brings us feelings of spirituality and peace. Just being in a garden setting is in itself salubrious; active gardening only heightens those feelings. (Disregard this notion if you’re busy slathering salve on your poison ivy rash or just fell into a manure pile.)
The positive role that plants, their cultivation, and gardens play in fostering well-being is the essence of horticultural therapy, now an up-and-coming profession, although it has been a well-regarded practice for centuries. Dr. Benjamin Rush, called the father of American psychiatry, reported early in the 19th century that gardens could be curative for people with mental illness. Following World War II, horticultural therapy greatly expanded after being used in the psychological rehabilitation of hospitalized veterans. Specially trained practitioners are now members of rehab teams of psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians, and occupational therapists, and their carefully planned courses of horticultural therapy have specific treatment goals and involve patients in all phases of gardening, from sowing seeds to selling produce.
Healing Gardens
Every gardener who has reached for the Ben-Gay after a day of hauling, digging, raking, bending, exhuming rocks, or waging a tug-of-war with an obstinate taproot can acknowledge the physical benefits of gardening as exercise. But organized horticultural programs have myriad other benefits as well. Children, senior citizens, and people recovering from illness or injury, or drug or alcohol abuse, as well as those with physical and learning disabilities and mental health problems, are all prime beneficiaries of these programs.
Horticultural therapy has the most striking impact on those who are vulnerable or socially isolated, such as the elderly and people who are hospitalized or imprisoned. Since traditional forms of communication aren’t always required in gardening activities, stroke patients and others who for one reason or another lack verbal communication skills can interact socially, work on a team, and acquire the self-assurance and pride that comes with feeling able to perform useful, productive labor. Gardening programs give these individuals a chance to participate in meaningful activities that promote responsibility, social skills, and work ethic. Horticultural therapy patients in prison and psychiatric hospitals show increased abilities in decision making and self-control. And staff members similarly report that participants have increased confidence, self-esteem, and hopefulness.
Therapeutic gardens also allow people in wheelchairs, severely incapacitated children, the elderly, and others with a variety of disabilities to take part in watering, seeding, and making crafts from plants. Participants enjoy being out in the fresh air, smelling the flowers, tasting the just-picked vegetables and fruit, as well as the physical activity of gardening and interaction with fellow gardeners.
Alzheimer’s patients have been shown to benefit particularly from being in a garden: Their senses are stimulated by being outdoors, seeing colors, smelling scents, hearing birds sing, and touching plants and soil. Those with early-stage dementia can regain basic functioning and build self-esteem. Gardening gives those with late-stage dementia sensory stimulation, an awareness beyond themselves, and—not to be overlooked—pleasure. A review of the effects of gardens at nursing homes revealed that there were more violent incidents among patients at facilities without gardens than at homes with gardens. And studies of hort therapy programs in both hospitals and prisons consistently demonstrate that when participants have improved relationships with staff and with their peers, they are better able to integrate with the outside community, and they gain critical life skills and a sense of ownership and self-esteem.
Life-Changing Chores
This is certainly true for juvenile offenders. Gardening therapy, through a vocational horticulture curriculum, can be a tool to improve social bonding among youths and help them develop improved attitudes about their personal success and job preparedness. Tom Ogren, who specializes in, among other things, allergies and gardening, taught young delinquents–mostly Los Angeles—area gang members—at the El Paso de Robles Youth Correctional Facility, a California Youth Authority maximum-security prison, for 12 years. Ogren describes his program in one of his books Allergy-Free Gardening (Ten Speed Press, 2000). “Typically incarcerated for armed robbery, muggings, and murder, most of my charges could barely read, although they ranged in age from 15 to 25, and none had done any gardening.”
“I started the program there,” Ogren continues, “and over the years as the program grew and the gardens expanded, I learned new things along with my wayward students. I designed our gardens to be therapeutic. We built a big brick barbecue so we could cook things we grew. We grew hundreds of fruit trees so we’d have fresh fruit to eat. We put up bird feeders so we’d attract and see birds in the garden. We put up birdbaths, made wind chimes, and grew huge gardens of vegetables and flowers organically.”
“I taught [my kids] to value frogs, toads, lizards, and snakes as welcome additions to the garden. We made huge piles of compost. About the only form of punishment we used was turning the compost heap. We listened to music on the radio while we worked. Deep, profound changes happened to many of these hardened criminals while working in the garden…. As they grew fist-sized tomatoes and watermelons as big as beach balls, they became proud of their accomplishments. The more they learned about plants, the less they were interested in crime. Many of these boys learned how to read, do math, and write, and learned it all in the gardens and greenhouses.”
So great was the improvement in Ogren’s charges that some of his peers in corrections work suspected him of bribing his wards or doing something otherwise illegal. His colleagues couldn’t understand how “hoodlums” could learn the scientific names of hundreds of plants and suddenly become avid readers and gardeners. “We just set up a garden with a healing atmosphere and then let it work its wonders,” Ogren writes. “The right garden is a magical place. Plants are not judgmental. You take good care of them and they thrive. In the garden, your mind is free to wander, daydream, relax. Good things happen in good gardens.”
Something similar takes place on a two-acre patch at New York City’s correctional facility on Rikers Island. As described by program director James Jiler in his book Doing Time in the Garden (New Village Press, 2006), the Horticultural Society of New York’s GreenHouse Project combines classroom lessons and hands-on gardening. After six years, the program has a mere 5% to 10% rate of recidivism (repeat offenders having to return to jail), compared with 65% in the general Rikers Island population. Some GreenHouse alumni find permanent jobs with landscaping companies upon leaving prison.
We all need to experience the healthy effects of gardens as an antidote to the artificial environments of modern life and to maintain our connection with nature. When I was a pupil at P.S. 208 in Brooklyn in 19…well, never mind—we learned to tend a little garden in the corner of the playground. I’m sure that dose of horticultural therapy is why I still garden, and probably why to this day I haven’t been asked to repeat the second grade.
So, the next time someone teases you about your “problematic” plant purchasing, just say you’re simply following doctor’s orders and dismiss them with a wave of your well-worn trowel.
Ilene Sternberg is an award-winning garden writer and the author of Best Garden Plants of Pennsylvania (Lone Pine Publishing, 2006).